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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25470064">As You Were</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/galadrieljones/pseuds/galadrieljones'>galadrieljones</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Last of Us</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(and so does Joel)., Alternate Ending, Alternate Universe, American Landscapes, Americana, Backstory, But how?, Canon Divergence, Canon Era, Canon-Typical Violence, Denial of Feelings, Ellie gets to be happy, F/M, Family Dynamics, Finding the Good in Humanity Again, First Love, Fix-It, Flash Forward, Flashbacks, Found Family, Grief/Mourning, Joel (The Last of Us) Lives, Joel is Saved, Loyalty, Parallels, Protective Characters, Retelling, Second Chances, Slow Burn, Unrequited Love, Young Love, love after love</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 11:27:29</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>47,203</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25470064</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/galadrieljones/pseuds/galadrieljones</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>When Joel and Ellie take a wrong turn on their journey from Pittsburgh to Wyoming, they find themselves lost in what feels like a time warp: a beautiful place with a dark and dangerous secret, filled with painful memories and reminders of the past. But they aren’t alone. When they meet Cici and Noah, a mother and son fighting tirelessly for survival on their family farm, things finally start to take a new shape, altering the course of their lives in irrevocable ways. In the end, for those with little hope to spare, family is what you make it. </p><p> <em>This is an AU, starting after the events of the Summer chapter in the first game, and extending into the timeline of the second.</em></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us), Dina/Jesse (The Last of Us), Ellie &amp; Joel (The Last of Us), Joel (The Last of Us)/Original Female Character(s)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>59</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>137</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. A Prologue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I will be using a similar format to the games <em>The Last of Us</em> and <em>The Last of Us, Pt. 2</em>, ie: separated into larger parts, named for the more general locations in the US where they take place, which will then be broken down into smaller chapters, named for their more specific locations or situations:</p><p>Part 1: THE FLOODPLAIN (Ch. 1-10)<br/>Part 2: THE I-80 (Ch. 11-?)<br/>Part 3: ?<br/>Part 4: ?<br/>Part 5: ?</p><p><a href="https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5rHq3E7MbaVJfFOnYRBQNz?si=qVoEFBpXTxiTgAVPTHTDpw">Playlist</a> for Ellie, Joel, Cici, and Noah. </p><p>Updates will usually happen on weekends! But not always. They’ll be as often as possible until complete. </p><p>This this is a work of fanfiction with an emphasis on speculative realism. Any real life people and/or groups that I mention in this work are meant to be fictional, transformative interpretations of said people and/or groups. It is in no way meant to represent reality as we currently know it, but instead, reality as it could exist in the universe of <em>The Last of Us</em> twenty years in the future. </p><p>Please note the tags! This is my version of what happened. </p><p>Comments are greatly appreciated!! You can also find me on <a href="https://galadrieljones.tumblr.com/">tumblr</a> &lt;3</p>
    </blockquote><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>PART 1: THE FLOODPLAIN</p>
</div>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I don’t know what happened,” said Joel. He had been polishing the neck of the guitar. Just south of the second fret there was stamped, or maybe painted, the image of a moth. He had found the part in the wreckage of a community theater in the Bighorn Basin, in a town called Cody some weeks before. “Wasn't no plan.”</p><p>“These other people,” said Tommy. They were sitting in a safe house in an old tract community near Jackson. They had a low fire going in the fireplace, for cooking. Outside, it was a summer thunderstorm, and they would have to wait it out till morning for the next patrol. “We never really got to talk about them, when y'all came through in the Fall. Where the hell’d you pick them up?”</p><p>“Wisconsin,” said Joel. “We’d gotten lost, needed fuel. We came to this driveway in the middle of goddam Amish country. The middle of nowhere. And there they were. When we met them, they were in a bad spot. They were surviving, but the circumstances where they were living at the time were real...trying. Real bad. They needed to leave, and we gave them the excuse. Almost like it was happenstance.”</p><p>“They don’t seem Amish.”</p><p>“They ain’t,” said Joel. “I just said it was Amish <em>country</em>. All farming, rural communities and such. You think of where we grew up in Texas and then you expand that by a whole degree. These people had nothing but their land.”</p><p>“Well, they’re doing a good job,” said Tommy. He had slouched into his chair, hung his head off the back and looked up at the ceiling as if pondering something profound. “Noah’s as capable as they come.”</p><p>“I know,” said Joel.</p><p>“And Cici, well. She’s teaching the patrols how to make goddam IEDs? Hell of a woman. Maria speaks of her as if we’ve struck gold.”</p><p>“They’re good people,” said Joel. “They’ve had to make do, make hard choices. But don’t make no mistake.”</p><p>“That, I surmise,” said Tommy. He puffed up and looked Joel in the eye. The rain was pounding down on the roof overhead. “What happened,” he said. "With the Fireflies. You ever find them?"</p><p>Thunder rumbled in the distance. Joel scrubbed at his newly-trimmed beard, and it made a sand paper noise that he wasn’t used to. “Yeah, we found them.”</p><p>“We got all night,” said Tommy. “Don’t be shy.” He took a tin of tobacco out of his pocket then, like a surprise. He had some rolling papers, too. "You should just start at the beginning."</p><p>Joel placed the guitar aside and leaned over the display. He said, “Y'all growing tobacco?”</p><p>“Some,” said Tommy. “The weather ain’t perfect for it, but we got greenhouses.”</p><p>“No shit,” said Joel.   </p><p>Tommy was hunched over the table now, sprinkling a little bit of the dried tobacco into one of the paper squares. He rolled it up tightly, sealed it with his tongue. Then he slid it across the table to Joel and proceeded to roll another. “I swipe some, every so often, from the pantry stash,” he said. “Don’t tell Maria.”</p><p>Joel picked up the cigarette and looked at it, ran it under his nose. Tommy had a book of matches which he left on the table between them. Joel took one, lit the cigarette, and then he shook out the match and flicked it to the floorboards.</p><p>“Goddam.” It was a relic from another life. The nicotine made him dizzy. He closed his eyes.</p><p>“When’s the last time you had one of these?” said Tommy, smoking.</p><p>“Some time,” said Joel. "Not that long."</p><p>He said no more on the matter, but he remembered, exactly, the last time he’d had one. It had been late summer, the year before, on top of the roof of the Old Main building, on the Augustana College Campus in Moline, IL. It was with her, Cici. They were overlooking the Mississippi, could see all the way to Iowa. It had been raining that day, and the air smelled good now, for once. It had been a hell of a day. Nothing good right up until the very end. Noah and Ellie had foraged an entire carton of unopened Parliaments from a corner store in the town, along with a bunch of other stuff. Cici had her hair down that night. They were just talking, wearing new clothes and it felt like any other day. The cigarettes were stale, but it was worth it. They had whiskey, too, which they drank out of paper cups. Joel remembered now, how it had all made him think of Texas, at the time.</p><p>He took a deep breath and looked out the window. Then, he looked at Tommy, who was smiling through the smoke between them as if he had a secret.</p><p>“What’s going on with you?” said Joel.</p><p>“Nothing,” said Tommy, smoking. “What’s going on with you?”</p><p>“Nothing.”</p><p>“You and Cici,” said Tommy, as if a mindreader. “That anything special? I saw the two of you the other day, walking together by the river.”</p><p>“Well, if you saw us walking together by the river, then I guess there ain’t no more to say.”</p><p>Tommy laughed. Outside, the lightning was supernatural and lit up the terrain, turning it all white, just for an instant. “You still got that terrible sense of humor. When the four of you showed back up here a couple of weeks ago, I didn't know what I was in for. But you haven’t changed one bit.”</p><p>Joel smoked his cigarette, and as he did, he set about rolling another. Wasn’t nothing to it, but he thought about Ellie and whether she’d smell it on his clothes. He didn’t really want that. So he took off his jacket. “I’ll make you a deal, little brother,” said Joel, tossing the jacket to the couch on the opposite side of the fireplace. “You quit asking questions about my personal life, and I’ll tell you my goddam story.”</p><p>“The whole story?” said Tommy.</p><p>“The whole story,” said Joel.</p><p>Tommy had some liquor locked up in a safe in the garage. He went to get it. While he was gone, Joel picked up the guitar. It didn’t have its strings yet, was just a piece of wood. Still, he rested it in his lap, as it was something to hold on to. When Tommy got back, he had a glass mason jar full of moonshine. He unscrewed the top and measured two fingers for each of them into ceramic coffee cups.</p><p>Joel took a sip. It was disgusting. “Who made this?” he said, and he coughed, once. </p><p>“Eugene,” said Tommy. "You met him last week, at the softball game."</p><p>“Tastes like goddam rocket fuel.”</p><p>“Can’t guarantee it ain’t,” said Tommy. “Now, start from the beginning. I'm bored as hell."</p><p>Joel sighed, looked down at the clear liquor in his cup. The moonshine and the cigarettes with Tommy in the abandoned tract home in the middle of a summer storm was enough to make him feel like a teenager again.</p><p>That sort of thing had been happening to him a lot lately. He took a drink. "Well," he said. "It's like I said, we was leaving Chicago, and we got lost." </p><p>"How lost?"</p><p>"Real lost."</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Farmhouse</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>"If, somehow, the lord gave me a second chance at that moment, I would do it all over again."</em>
    <br/>
  </p>
</div>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Shit, Joel. I think we need to go back," said Ellie. She was in the front seat. She was holding a road map, staring out the rear window. She had sunburn on her cheeks, and it made her freckles real prominent. “The I-90 is back south.”</p><p>“Ain’t no way we are north of the I-90.”</p><p>“I'm only reporting what the map says.”</p><p>“It was hours ago we crossed into Wisconsin. Do you know how goddam far north we’d have to be if we are north of the I-90?”</p><p>“Doesn’t it just go in a straight line?”</p><p>“Give me that.” Joel swiped the map, which made her huff. They were going about 45 on a state highway. It was feral farm fields flying by on all sides, crawling with weeds and wildflowers, lifting up and down an uneven terrain, seeming to grow on a kind of staircase. Joel knew this method. It was called terrace farming. He had thought Wisconsin was flatter. He’d never been, but this was all hills and limestone outcroppings that rose high into the air. He was concerned about falling rocks. It almost felt like they were driving through some sort of canyons. Whenever they crested a hill, they would see what looked to be old Lutheran churches, just a ton of them, white and rundown, with big, square barn quilts painted on the siding, or on the steeples. In some places, the corn still grew, and in others, the valleys dipped low enough that water completely flooded the area. There were so many rivers, little tributaries that ran right through the broken down towns. A lot of the side roads, too, had been consumed with water, or an overgrowth of trees, or piled up with automobiles, conspicuously, as if guiding them to, or away from something. He looked at the map, and then he looked at Ellie. “You were holding it upside down.”</p><p>“Oops.”</p><p>He sighed dramatically, stopped the car, and let it idle. He held the map open between them, dropped his finger to a spot he thought she might recognize. “See this here?” he said.</p><p>“Sure. That’s Madison.”</p><p>“Madison is the capital of Wisconsin. You know the state capitals? They teach you that in the QZ?”</p><p>“Yes, I know the state capitals,” said Ellie. </p><p>“Good. Well. I think we turned onto State Highway 18 just south of Madison, right here.”</p><p>“Well, we’re not on Highway 18 anymore, right?”</p><p>“We’re on Highway 61,” said Joel. He had a mosquito bite on the back of his neck, kept itching him. Truth be told as well, it had been some time since he had meaningfully studied a full blown road map. They had picked it up just north of the border in a dusty clicker town called Beloit. He scratched the mosquito bite. “We have gotten way too far the hell west. Or, maybe it’s east. Goddammit.”</p><p>“Didn’t we cross a big river like 20 minutes ago?” said Ellie. “Could be this. <em>The Wisconsin River.</em>” She said it in a venerable and British manner, as if she were narrating a nature documentary.</p><p>“Possibly,” said Joel, but then he knew it was. She was right. “I do remember a sign for a place called Boscobel.”</p><p>“Sweet,” said Ellie. “So, all we have to do is just keep going north.” She traced her finger along Highway 61, “and then we’ll get to I-90. We should be able to find something there, right? For gas?”</p><p>“There’ll be gas,” said Joel, “but that’s another 30 miles. We ain’t gonna make it.”</p><p>“Well, fuck,” said Ellie. She looked out the window. Joel put the car back in drive and kept going. “Maybe there’s like a scrapyard or something? We’ve seen a lot of old, shitty cars. Maybe there’s people around here.”</p><p>“Even if there are,” said Joel, “I ain’t certain whether they’re the kinds of people with whom we ought to…consort.”</p><p>“You mean like cannibals?”</p><p>“I didn’t say that,” said Joel, giving her a look. “Jesus. Where the hell’d you learn about cannibals?”</p><p>“The Donner Party,” said Ellie. “History class.”</p><p>Joel looked at her, and she was looking out the window. She had found a pen back in Beloit and doodled a large milk cow on her left forearm. He said, “I don’t know, Ellie. I don’t wanna take no chances. Not after last time.”</p><p>“Same here,” said Ellie. “But we have to do something.”</p><p>“I know,” said Joel. “I know, just—give me a minute.”</p><p> </p><p><em>Don't go back. </em>A little wind came through the window. She had fallen asleep to the wind chimes, like music on the Mississippi. Nobody was coming though. Nobody coming, they said. She heard him loud and clear: <em>Don’t go back. </em></p><p>“Mom. Mom?” It was the same voice. “Are you awake? Cici. Wake up the hell up. Over.”</p><p>She roused. She sat up quickly, as if the lord had appeared. Hair was in her face. Her head felt thick, like it was made of metal or something and she rubbed her temples immediately, looked up at the ceiling. It boasted an old, familiar crack, had been there since childhood. She picked up the walkie off the nightstand. She shook her head out, squeezed her eyes shut. She said, “I’m sorry. I’m up. Noah? Over.”</p><p>“I said, we got visitors. Over.”</p><p>“What kind of visitors? Over.”</p><p>“Don’t know,” said Noah. “A man, and his daughter. In a Tacoma. Over.”</p><p>“A daughter?” she said, looking around. Her shotgun was leaning against the bed post. “Noah,” she said. “Do they look friendly? Over.” There was some sort of pause, the walkie crackled. She heard the sounds of car doors amidst the static and froze up. “Noah.”</p><p>“They look friendly,” he said then. “I’ll check it out. Over.”</p><p>“Be careful.”</p><p>“Wait ten minutes, then come down to the battlement.”</p><p>
  <em>Over.</em>
</p><p>           </p><p>Noah had been in the crow’s nest reading a book called <em>The Road. </em>He had found the book at one of the college libraries over in Richland Center, he liked it and had now read it a couple times, always in the crow’s nest. <em>The Road</em> was about a man and his son walking around in a dark and hopeless post-apocalyptic setting, trying to escape roving gangs of cannibals. The man had an awful cough, and he knew he was going to die. It was his only goal to teach his son the ways of survival so that he may continue to “carry the torch” after his father’s death.</p><p>Noah was tall, dark-haired, and big across the shoulders. His eighteenth birthday was soon. From the crow’s nest, you could observe a lot of the immediate property, which he and his mother had booby-trapped with proximity mines and IEDs. His grandpa had been a Naval engineer, and his uncle had been in Iraq in 2004. All of them grain farmers. His mother was good with improvised demolition and she had taught him all he knew. Their land as they had established it that year was about six acres of riverfront with crops, an aging well, and a watering hole.</p><p>When the Tacoma pulled up the gravel drive it crested slowly to the top of the hill where Noah watched. It idled before the gate so Noah could see inside—a man and a young girl. He radioed his mom and then climbed down to the battlement, ten feet above ground, built to oversee the barbed-wire gate, which would open to their pasture and their lawn, their house. He popped the bolt in his rifle and pointed the barrel straight at the man, watching him through a scope. The man and the girl had got out of the car. They looked a little worn out but their clothes were normal, and they were not aggressive nor holding heat. They held their hands up in surrender. He supposed it could have been a con. But it just didn’t look like one. Not with a girl.</p><p>Noah didn’t say anything. He had caught the man’s attention, gazing at him through the scope, the crosshairs planted straight between his eyes. He was going to let the man speak first.        </p><p>“We ain’t armed,” said the man, keeping eye contact. “We don’t mean you no harm.”</p><p>“What’s your name,” said Noah.</p><p>“Joel,” said the man. “My name is Joel. This here is Ellie.”</p><p>Noah kept the rifle aimed, but he glanced at the girl over the top of the scope. “This your father.”</p><p>“No,” said the girl. “I mean, no. We’re just friends.”</p><p>“Friends?”</p><p>“We got stuck together,” said Ellie. “We’re both trying to get out west.”</p><p>“Where are your parents?”</p><p>“I have no idea,” said Ellie. “Probably dead. Where are yours?”</p><p>Noah lowered the rifle. He trusted her. He didn’t know why. “My mom is back at the house,” he said. “My dad is dead.”</p><p>“I’m sorry,” said Ellie. “That blows.”</p><p>For a moment they all just stood there, listening to the cicadas. Then Noah threw the gun over his shoulder and took a deep breath. He climbed down from the battlement. He unlatched the gate and threw it open from the inside. It was tall and heavy, made of scrap metal, treated wood, and wire. He approached them with caution. They kept their hands visible. He looked at Ellie. “Is this guy chill?”</p><p>“Not really,” said Ellie. “But he’s not gonna try and kill you, if that’s what you’re wondering.”</p><p>“Jesus,” said Joel.</p><p>“Just trying to be cooperative,” said Ellie.</p><p>Noah had the rifle resting on his shoulder. He was smiling at her. It was a hot day, mid-September. “Where you coming from,” he said to Joel.</p><p>“Back east.”</p><p>“Where.”</p><p>“Boston,” said Joel.</p><p>“Why do you got that cowboy accent if you’re from Boston.”</p><p>Joel gave him a wary look. “What the hell do you know about cowboys, son?”</p><p>“We got a TV and a VCR and a generator,” said Noah. “I like John Wayne.”</p><p>“Nice,” said Ellie.</p><p>“I’m from Texas originally,” said Joel. “Moved up to Boston a long time ago.”</p><p>Noah nodded. “Makes sense.”</p><p>“So it’s just you and your mom here?” said Ellie. “You guys got crops?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Noah.</p><p>“Any horses?”</p><p>“A few. Do you know how to ride?”</p><p>“Hell yeah,” said Ellie.</p><p>She seemed nice, thought Noah. He said to Joel, “So what brings you this far north?”</p><p>“We got lost,” said Ellie.</p><p>“No, we didn’t,” said Joel.</p><p>“We didn’t?”</p><p>“We got held up outside Chicago,” said Joel. “And I was trying to avoid the Quad Cities. Heard bad things about those parts.”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Noah. “We heard, too.”</p><p>“Couldn’t go nowhere but north,” said Joel. “It’s a lot of open country once you get off the highway. Trees and hills and a lot of the roads are flooded.”</p><p>“We got lost,” said Ellie.</p><p>Joel sighed. “How north are we? I mean, I know we ain’t as far as the I-90, but I don’t know where exactly we are.”</p><p>“You’re right outside Viroqua,” said Noah. “Vernon County.”</p><p>“Which means what?”</p><p>“Western Wisconsin,” said Noah. “Between Madison and Minneapolis.”</p><p>Joel sighed. “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”</p><p>“Closer to Madison, if it makes a difference.”</p><p>“Not really,” said Joel.</p><p>“What’s your name?” said Ellie.</p><p>Somewhere nearby there was the sound of a woodpecker. “Noah,” he said. “My mom’s name is Cynthia, but she goes by Cici. She’ll be here soon.”</p><p>“I am very sorry for our intrusion,” said Joel. “We didn’t mean to scare you. We saw a path, looked like it might lead to a scrapyard or something. We had no idea anybody would be living out here.”</p><p>“You looking for scrap?”</p><p>“No,” said Joel. “Just fuel.”</p><p>“Well, we got fuel,” said Noah, scratching at some of the raw scruff on his neck. “Not much we can spare though.”</p><p>“I’ll take whatever you can give.”</p><p>“There’s an Amish scrapyard, maybe ten miles out,” said Noah. “It’s got forty or fifty old school busses, a couple big-rigs, too. They don’t run, but nearly all of them got fuel.”</p><p>“The Amish are selling school busses?”</p><p>“I guess they used to just collect whatever they could find,” said Noah.</p><p>“Jesus,” said Joel. “Any of them still around?”</p><p>“Some,” said Noah.</p><p>“Noah,” said a woman. It was Cici, his mother. She was small, her light hair tied off her face, wearing a blue tee-shirt that was obviously too big. She was jogging toward them from up the way with a shotgun in her hands. “Noah. What’s going on.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” said Noah.</p><p>She stopped, regarded Joel and Ellie, said nothing.</p><p>“You Cici?” said Joel.</p><p>“Yes. Who’s asking?” she said.</p><p>“This is Joel,” said Noah. “And Ellie. They got lost leaving Chicago. They’re needing fuel.”</p><p>“Chicago is a long way from here,” she said. “You must have gotten really lost.”</p><p>“We did not get lost,” said Joel.</p><p>Ellie rolled her eyes.</p><p>“Whatever,” said Cici. She seemed kind of tough and direct, a little like Tess. She had a long, straight scar on her neck, looked bad. She wiped the sweat off her forehead and looked at Ellie. “You gonna rob me?”</p><p>“Hell no,” said Ellie. “Why would I do that?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Cici. “I don’t know why anybody would do that, but I have to ask.”</p><p>“We don’t mean you no harm,” said Joel. “I swear. Your boy here just told us about an Amish scrapyard ten miles away. We just need a little fuel to get us there, and for you to point us in the right direction, and we’ll be on our way.”</p><p>“Them Amish won’t trade with you,” she said. “They only trade with people they know.”</p><p>“Well, maybe you can help us,” said Ellie. “We can help each other.”</p><p>“Ellie,” said Joel.</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“Where you coming from?” said Cici.</p><p>“Boston," said Joel.</p><p>“You must be tired.”</p><p>“Yes, ma’am.”</p><p>“We got beds,” she said. “Extra. Plenty of room. And food.”</p><p>“What’s your meaning.”</p><p>“You stay for a few days, let me put you to work—you look strong. Are you strong?”</p><p>“I reckon I ain’t weak,” said Joel.</p><p>“Good. You can help Noah out with some of the heavy-lifting. And Ellie, is it? You can help me out, too.”</p><p>“Okay, sure.”</p><p>“I’ll get you your fuel,” said Cici to Joel, like she’d been making deals this way her whole life. “It’s like she said. You help us, we help you.”</p><p>Joel hesitated, glanced to Ellie who shrugged. “What the hell else are we gonna do?” she said.</p><p>He sighed. He glanced to Cici who was holding out her hand. “You ain’t gonna…carve us up and eat us, are you?”</p><p>This made her smile. When she did, he could tell that she was younger than she had originally seemed. Pretty, kind of mild, exactly like he’d been lead on to believe about Midwestern girls in his youth. Plain-like, and simple. “You’re funny,” she said.</p><p>He cleared his throat and straightened up, an old habit.</p><p>“We got a deal?” she said.</p><p>He said, “Yeah, okay.”</p><p>“Lead the way,” said Ellie.</p><p> </p><p>They went up the driveway, over a hill, and to the house. It was a plain white farmhouse, very old, but nicely kept. Noah took the keys and went and pulled around the truck through the gate and parked it on the lawn. Inside, there were the remnants of a real life. Joel knew they had always lived there, even before the outbreak. There were paintings on the walls, a lot of them, unframed, looked like somebody had made them—landscapes, and still lives, some scenes with sheep, a woman wearing a dress and holding a baby beneath an apple tree. They were all signed with a <em>W. </em>The kitchen was simple, and they had fruit and vegetables and meat and a gas stove that still worked. In the sitting room, there was a blue sofa and a red rocking chair, a lot of patchwork quilts, and a loom. There was a radio and a record player, the old TV, and the VCR, like Noah had said. They had electricity, but Joel could tell it was rationed. There were oil lamps in every corner of the room, and some Christmas lights strung up around the windows, colorful bunting, which brought the room to life with color. It was a pleasant place, and familiar, and warm, and when they entered, both him and Ellie felt safe.</p><p>“Holy shit,” said Ellie. “This is your house?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Cici. She hung the shotgun on a nail by the door. “It’s not much.”</p><p>“It’s awesome,” said Ellie. She took off her backpack, but then she seemed unsure of where to put it. Noah took it. She thanked him.</p><p>“The bedrooms are all upstairs,” he said.</p><p>“You all been living here a while?” said Joel, looking around. He cracked his knuckles.</p><p>“My mom grew up here,” said Noah.</p><p>Cici made no addition. She was already boiling water on the stove.</p><p>“Well, it’s real nice,” said Joel. “Thank you, ma’am. For your hospitality.”</p><p>She glanced at him, as if suspicious, but then she softened. She said, “You’re welcome.”</p><p>When they got upstairs, Noah showed them to the room all the way at the end of the hallway. It was big enough, with two windows, two twin beds, each with a little nightstand, and a lamp, and a wash bowl. There was a single bureau, and a standing mirror. There was no working bathroom indoors, said Noah, as the plumbing was shot. They used the outhouse. He also told them not to drink from the river, or to bathe in it, under any circumstances. Joel found this unusual, but he didn't press him on it, just went along with the rules.</p><p>Noah had been carrying Ellie’s backpack, set it down on one of the little beds. Joel set his backpack on the other.</p><p>“This okay?” said Noah.</p><p>“This’ll do just fine,” said Joel. He became a little awkward, but then he squared up with Noah and lowered his voice in seriousness. “Are you absolutely sure this is okay?” he said.</p><p>Noah just stared at him. He was forthright. He said, “Why are you asking?”</p><p>“You get a lot of travelers come through here?”</p><p>“No,” said Noah. “Not anymore. When my dad was alive, sometimes. But not anymore.”</p><p>“It’s just very unexpected,” said Joel. “How can you trust us?”</p><p>Noah looked at Ellie, who had switched open her knife and was studying the tip. It was just a habit. She flipped it shut and tucked it back into her pocket the moment she realized he was watching. “Sorry,” she said. “What?”</p><p>“Nothing,” said Joel.</p><p>“He wants to know how we know we can trust you.”</p><p>“Well,” said Ellie. “How do you know?”</p><p>Noah shrugged. He didn’t seem to have a clean answer. “We’ve gotten reavers, coming through here, on more than one occasion,” he said. “They bring numbers. They bring guns. They don’t make it past the minefield on the perimeter, and if they do, they get shot. Not a one of them has ever simply driven up to the front gate, exited their car, and apologized for being a burden. Not one of them has ever been a girl either.”</p><p>“What the hell are reavers?” said Ellie.</p><p>“Hunters,” said Joel, looking at her. “That’s what he means. We call them hunters, back east.”</p><p>“Whatever you want to call them,” said Noah. “Anyway, you don’t have to worry about us, okay? I appreciate the concern. But this ain’t our first rodeo.”</p><p>“Sounds good,” said Joel. “I just—I was thinking about you and your mom, out here, all alone.”</p><p>“We’re not alone,” said Noah, point blank. “There are others, in the area. You just don’t see them. Like I said, you don’t have to worry.”</p><p>Joel turned subdued, looked down at his knuckles, which were still bruised from Pittsburgh. “I see. Well, I had to make sure.”</p><p>“My mom’s gonna cook dinner,” he said. “It’ll be ready in like an hour. I got some more shit to do out front.”</p><p>“We’ll see you then,” said Ellie.</p><p>“Cool,” said Noah. He nodded at Joel. “We good?”</p><p>“We’re good,” said Joel.</p><p>“Good.” He sort of half-smiled, then he was gone.</p><p>Ellie flopped onto the bed immediately. She closed her eyes and said, “Holy shit, Joel. We really lucked out, huh?”</p><p>Joel was still palming his knuckles, staring at the closed door, thinking about the boy. He didn’t feel in danger. He just thought, something bad had happened here. He could feel it. Could sense it. The situation was complex. He took a deep breath. He said to her, “I think you might be right.”</p><p>“You think they’re cannibals?”</p><p>“Probably not,” said Joel. He sat down on the other bed. It creaked beneath his weight. He thought to take off his shoes, but perhaps that was too forward. “Guess we’ll find out soon.”</p><p>“I like this place,” said Ellie, staring up at the ceiling. She was wide-eyed. She was filled with wonder. “It’s pure, you know? I’ve never been in a place like this before.”</p><p>“You mean like a farm?”</p><p>“Yeah,” she said. “A farmhouse. It’s just so…nice.” She switched her blade open again, then closed it. Flipped it open again, closed it. “Is this what it was like back in Texas?” she said. “Before the Outbreak?”</p><p>He looked at her, realizing he hadn’t ever really told her about Texas. Nothing specific, at least. “It was a little like this, yes,” he said.</p><p>“Man,” said Ellie. “I could live here.” She closed her eyes, smiled. In about a minute, she was asleep.</p><p> </p><p>Cici was salting a pan of lamb shanks in the kitchen. That man, she could hear the weight of his boots upstairs. As she pressed the salt into the meat with her fingers, she looked at the red and knew she should not have been so trusting. It was almost 7:30, and the sun was only just now starting to set. Whenever it did, it shone bright through the westerly window, over the living room, blinding her for several minutes before hiding behind the trees. Noah came downstairs. He hung up his rifle on a hook next to the front door. He came into the kitchen and leaned against the counter, across from her. He was dirty from the events of the day. He’d had to redig the trench on the eastern part of the perimeter. A couple runners had wandered in and tripped the mines there, upping the soil and taking down a tree.</p><p>“They good?” she said. She started a second burner, for the lamb. She stirred the rice.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Noah.</p><p>She looked at him and felt guilty. It was a common, stupid thing for her. He used to just go about his day, but now she was pretty sure that he could sense it. She looked back at the lamb. “Maybe we should’ve been more discerning with him.”</p><p>“He’s okay,” he said.</p><p>“He don’t seem off at all to you?”</p><p>“Not really,” said Noah. “He seems kind of hokey, if anything. Though I do think he’s seen and done some shit.”</p><p>“Why do you think that?”</p><p>“He’s scarred up.”</p><p>“You must be starving,” she said, wanting to change the subject. “I’m sorry about today. Them fucking runners showed up, and I don’t know where they’re coming from anymore.”</p><p>“Seems like there’s definitely more,” he said. He turned around to look out the window, the sun making its exit. “I don’t know what to say.”</p><p>“They must be coming from La Crosse,” she said.</p><p>“At least,” he said. “If they’re runners, that means more are turning.”</p><p>She got very quiet from the inside out.</p><p>“I’m gonna ask him to come with me,” said Noah, "to La Crosse.”</p><p>“You don’t know him, Noah.”</p><p>“We’ll give it a couple days,” he said. “Then we’ll see.”</p><p>It had just been a while since she’d really seen a man, that’s all. She had lost her bearings on the normal kind. “Go on and do the cameras for the night,” she said.</p><p>He slapped his palm lightly to the counter, to break the moment. “Okay.”</p><p>When he left, she watched him pick up the rifle and disappear out the door, looking like his father. Then she poured herself a glass of whiskey from a jug by the stove to drink as she cooked and waited. Upstairs, it was hushed quiet.</p>
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<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Driftless</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>"When you're lost in the darkness, look for the light." </em>
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          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <em>On the record player:</em>
</p><p>"Ashes and Fire" by Ryan Adams (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILVJiH179gU">youtube</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/0oZw3H6FPKh60aEFvL3q2Z?si=MjiH8LQHQuulq2i_uaKsbQ">spotify</a>)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>After dinner, Joel insisted on cleaning up. Cici said she'd show him around the kitchen, the downstairs. The food had been really good, like way too good. Ellie had never had lamb before, ended up eating almost as much as Noah. At some point, though, while everybody was making small talk, she became dreamy. She was looking out the window, pressing her thumb lightly to the blade of her knife, finding shapes in the stars. Noah came over after everybody was finished with the meal and asked her if she wanted to come with him, out to the Crow's Nest, to help him with something.</p><p>"What are we doing?" said Ellie. It was probably about ten o'clock and full dark outside.</p><p>"It's a mess out there," he said, throwing the shotgun strap over his shoulder. "I just have to go haul some stuff out. You can come, if you want."</p><p>"Yeah, sure," she said. She smiled and closed up her blade. "Let's go." </p><p>But then, Joel said, "Ellie."</p><p>His voice was big, and deep, like space. Whenever he said her name like that, she immediately found his eyes. Something about choosing to stick together like they had. You can't really unstick. </p><p>"What's wrong?" she said.</p><p>He was standing with his hands in a basin, which was full of soapy water. The faucets didn't work anymore, said Noah. Nowhere in the whole house, or on the whole property. The running water was completely unusable. Ellie thought it was a little funny, seeing Joel do dishes. She'd never thought of him like that before. He wiped his soapy hands on his jeans, and then he looked down at them and seemed to reassess what it was he was about to say. She was listening. "Just be careful," he said, looking at her in a way that meant compromise.</p><p>"Sure," she said. "I will."</p><p>"Thanks, Ellie."</p><p> </p><p>"She really listens to you," said Cici, once the kids were gone. She was taking the vacuum out of a broom closet by the front door. "Or is that just when other people are around?"</p><p>Joel stopped what he was doing, his hands back in the soapy water. Admittedly, he felt like a stranger in a kitchen like this. It had been too many years. "You mean Ellie?"</p><p>"Yeah," she said. "It can't be easy, with just her dad."</p><p>"Ellie ain't—she ain't my daughter," said Joel, remembering, suddenly, that Cici did not know. Noah knew, but the particulars of their relationship at large had not come up yet. It just wasn't important. "I'm just looking after her. For the time being."</p><p>"Oh," said Cici. She was surprised. "I'm sorry. I just figured."</p><p>"It's okay," said Joel. He started washing the plates with a sponge. "Back in Boston, there was a lot of...violence. A small group of us were trying to get out of the QZ," he said, scrubbing. "My brother lives out west, got some sort of set-up there, so that's been our plan, to find him. Some of us got as far as Pittsburgh. But me and Ellie, we're the only two made it this far." He looked down at the plate. It was like a coral color, porcelain. </p><p>Cici was quiet. When he turned around, she was just holding the cord to the vacuum cleaner, staring at it like she had forgotten what it did. "Well, we're glad you found us," she said. “Despite the circumstances.”</p><p>"Us, too," said Joel. "Y'all said you were in need of some real help. I've been wondering what kind."</p><p>She went to plug in the vacuum, but she didn't turn it on yet. Instead, she just stood, like she was piecing something together in her mind. "Infected,” she said. Then she was examining her fingernails. She had her hair braided about halfway down her back. She didn’t seem to want to look him in the eye. “They been tearing up our land,” she went on. “More keep coming, from up the river. And every time they do, they blow the mines on the perimeter. Yesterday, they brought down a tree. Noah had to rewire the entire valley and dig a whole new trench. I help as much as I can, which is usually enough, but given the volume of work, there’s only so much I can contribute these days, reasonably. I just—you coming along, it’s like happenstance.”</p><p>Joel took a deep breath, looked down at his watch. He had his sleeves rolled up above his forearms. “How many mines you got down there.”</p><p>“Over a hundred,” she said. “There’s IEDs, too. Some can be detonated remotely.”</p><p>”Who’s building IEDs?” said Joel.</p><p>“I am,” she said. She offered zero explanation. “All the maintenance, everything, it’s getting to be fucking impossible.” </p><p>“Well,” he said. “Like I said earlier, I’ll help in any way I can.”</p><p>”Thank you,” said Cici.</p><p>"Do you have any idea what's bringing them down, the hordes?"</p><p>"We got some idea," she said. She bit off a hangnail. She told him he needed to talk to Noah. </p><p>"Okay," said Joel. It was a little like she had given up. He didn’t like that. He knew she was keeping something from him, but he didn't press. "You know I thought we might be able to get to all this over dinner,” he went on, “but then the food turned out to be a little too good. I forgot to ask."</p><p>She started loosening the plaits of her braid, smiled to herself. "Thanks," she said. She was a subdued woman, at least for the time being. "I mean, I don't think I've ever seen a girl eat as much as Ellie."</p><p>"It's mostly canned rations in the QZs," said Joel. "I ain't surprised. Other than squirrels and rabbits, we ain't had real meat in some time. Ellie's certainly never had lamb."</p><p>"Was she born in the Boston QZ?"</p><p>"I guess so," said Joel, realizing he didn't really know. "The woman who raised her, more or less, she was a Firefly. You know that group?"</p><p>"Yeah," said Cici, leaning on the vacuum. "I do, actually. A couple Fireflies came through here, maybe five years ago. They were looking to recruit."</p><p>"Anybody go with them?"</p><p>"No," she said. "They were spouting off all sorts of plans. Said there was gonna be a cure. But they were focused up in Minneapolis. We had a whole community here, going strong for a while. It was safe. Nobody wanted to risk leaving, not on a lark like that."</p><p>“Well, that makes sense," said Joel. He finished the coral plate, set it on the drying rack, then set forth on a plate that was more of a custard yellow. He didn't ask what had happened, with their community, and why it was she and Noah were out here all alone. He washed the dishes.</p><p>Cici turned on the vacuum, cleaned up under the table, and around Joel's feet. When she finished, she put it away and started wiping down the surfaces with a damp towel. When the dishes were all clean and drying, and Joel was drying his hands on a linen towel, she brought out the rest of the wine from dinner and poured it into two small mason jars, one for each of them. They sat down at the kitchen table, trying to undo a little bit of their strife as they stared down at their wine, their hands, their knees. As two adults, they were somewhat unaccustomed to small talk. It was easier to hide things, for both of them. They were trying very hard though. Joel could tell that Cici was, not uncomfortable, but a little awkward. She just didn't know what to say to him.</p><p>"So," he said, after a little while. "Noah. He's what, eighteen, nineteen years old?"</p><p>"He's seventeen," she said, drinking. "He'll be eighteen in a couple weeks though."</p><p>"He's big for a seventeen-year-old," said Joel, drinking. "Pretty tall."</p><p>"His grandpa on his dad's side played football at Madison," she said. "He was a tight end. It runs in the family."</p><p>"You don't say."</p><p>She got a little red in the cheeks, and sipped her wine. "Noah is a good son. He does right by me, and by this farm."</p><p>"I can tell." Joel drank some of his wine, too. It was a little thin, made from cabernet grapes they had grown in a vineyard out back. That’s what Noah had said. Grapes don't grow in Wisconsin like they do in California, he'd said. But they do grow. "I will admit that I was a little surprised,” said Joel. “You look kind of young to have such a grown-up son. That's a compliment, by the way."</p><p>It was like she was trying to smile, but she hid it. "I'm thirty-six," she said. "I had Noah very young."</p><p>"I get it," said Joel. "You don't have to explain anything to me."</p><p>They sat for a little while, drinking their fruity wine and listening to the nature sounds coming in the open windows. The river rushing, snaking through the property like a silvery ribbon, the crickets big and deep. The clock on the wall.</p><p>"You know, I noticed, on the drive in, this place don't look like what I thought Wisconsin was supposed to look like."</p><p>"How so?"</p><p>"It's so hilly," he said. "With the stone ridges and the outcroppings, the rivers and the terrace farms. I thought Wisconsin was supposed to be pretty flat." </p><p>Cici got up then. She went to the record player, on a shelf by the TV, and she was rifling through a stack of vinyls. "Most of it is," she said. "But where we are, it's different. You ever heard of the Driftless Area?"</p><p>"No," said Joel. "What the hell's that?"</p><p>She chose one vinyl from the stack, slid the record from the envelope. "It's this small area around the upper-Mississippi, in the floodplain of southwestern Wisconsin mostly, some parts of Minnesota and Iowa. During the Ice Age, you know, the glaciers came down, flattened out everything. That's why Wisconsin is the way it is, but down here, in this tiny little corner, it escaped glaciation, somehow. It just missed us. There are no leftovers from the glaciers, or glacial deposits I guess, and so that's why the terrain looks the way it does, like the waterfalls and the cold streams, all the tributaries and big ridges and everything, the high forests. There's no drift. It's driftless<em>.</em>" She was centering the record on the spindle. </p><p>Joel was looking down into his wine, feeling dumbfounded. "You're telling me the geography around here ain't changed in a hundred thousand years?"</p><p>"More or less," she said, setting down the needle. "It's some of the best trout fishing in the world, where we live."</p><p>"Y'all must fish a lot then. Does Noah get out there much with his line?"</p><p>"Not anymore," she said. Something about the sound of her voice, he knew that was the end of their talk on the Driftless.</p><p>The record player crackled and clicked. A song came on. The music filled the house. It was almost joyful. Joel had been daydreaming at first, but then he realized that he recognized the voice. "Is this Ryan Adams?" he said.</p><p>”Yeah," said Cici. “You know his stuff?”</p><p>“I do,” said Joel. “I saw him live in Dallas, all the way back in, what was it now, 2004?"</p><p>”Really?" she said.</p><p>”Really.”</p><p>”That's amazing. But you’re so old.”</p><p>He laughed. This surprised him, the sudden levity between them. “Well, I was a teenager.”</p><p>”What are you now, like forty-five?”</p><p>He gave her a look. "You gonna guess my age, Miss Cici?"</p><p>"I don't know," she said. "I'm sorry. Is that weird?"</p><p>”Not really," said Joel. "I'm just messing with you. If you must know. I'll be forty-eight at the end of the month.”</p><p>"How old is Ellie?" said Cici.</p><p>"She's fourteen," said Joel.</p><p>"What does she like?" said Cici. “I mean, what are her interests?”</p><p>Joel wrapped his hands all the way around the mason jar, as if to heat the wine within. "She likes comic books," he said. "I try to pick them up for her, whenever I find some. I've heard her sing, too, whenever we're on the road. She ain't half bad, and she tries to whistle every now and then so I think she likes music. But the place she grew up, it was basically a military prep school. Real stifling. She ain’t really used to having the liberty of interests."</p><p>"I thought you said she was raised by Fireflies?"</p><p>"It's complicated," said Joel. He swallowed some of the wine.</p><p>"I see," said Cici. "How long have you two been traveling together?" </p><p>"A couple months," said Joel, right away. "Seems like forever."</p><p>"I'm sorry about your people, from Boston," said Cici. "The people you said you lost. I don't know what to say."</p><p>Joel saw the shape of Tess, darkening the doorway. It seemed to drop a shadow, over the room, his insides, just for a second. He blinked. “You don't have to worry about me,” he said. Then he looked at Cici. Her face was pretty. Anybody would have noticed as much. "I'm fine."</p><p>Her eyes were dark, her braid undone over her shoulder. She drank her wine and said softly, "Okay."</p><p> </p><p>Once they got outside, Ellie looked up. The sky swam darkly. The stars here were like nothing else, she thought. Maybe a million ribbons, maybe fishes in a black pool. It seemed to breathe up there, to teem. <em>Teem. </em>That was the word. She wanted to tell Joel. She thought it was a neat word, he might appreciate. She was used to feeling desperate, warm floods—of emotions, which she would then bury deep inside of herself.</p><p>She followed Noah, trailing slightly behind. They spoke little. He did ask her how she felt about it, out there. The farm.</p><p>"I love it," she said. "You're so lucky."</p><p>They walked back down to the gate where they’d first met. When they finally got to the crow’s nest, Ellie needed a boost up to the ladder, and then he followed up behind her. When she got to the top, she dusted her hands off on her jeans and looked around.</p><p>It really was like a little nest, she thought. It was totally his. There was an oil lamp glowing on a low table, and stacked up beside it were dozens of paperback novels. Names like Ernest Hemingway, Cormac McCarthy, Jim Harrison. Noah started cleaning up, right away. Tidying things, sweeping the floor with an old straw broom. There were a couple bean bag chairs with neat, psychedelic patterns, and a battery-powered hot plate, and some dirty plates, bottles and mugs. She could tell he spent a lot of time in the crow’s nest, alone. She could tell that maybe he liked it to be neat and clean up there at the start of each new day.</p><p>As he stacked up the plates and things and swept the floor, she flipped through some of the novels on the table. There was one book that was open, conspicuously, on top of the rest. That one, she did not touch, for fear of losing his place. “You like to read?” she said, stupidly.</p><p>“Yeah,” he said. “Do you?”</p><p>“Yeah,” she said. “Do you ever read comics?”</p><p>“Sometimes,” he said. “I have a bunch inside.”</p><p>“Sweet,” said Ellie, looking around. There were some posters on the wall, nothing she recognized. One was for a band called Pearl Jam. “I was reading this one series. It’s called Savage Starlight. I mean, it’s stupid. You heard of it?”</p><p>“No,” said Noah. “What’s it about?”</p><p>“It’s about this chick,” she said. There was a quilt, draped over one of the bean bags. The craftsmanship was very lovely. Ellie ran her hand over the soft knitting. “Her name is Dr. Daniella Star. She’s like a scientist. She invented some kind of crazy time travel, and it’s just like, her adventures in space, I guess.”</p><p>“Sounds pretty intense,” said Noah. He dumped the dirty plates into a canvas rucksack. He set the broom against the door jamb. “There’s a comic store in Viroqua. We could go pillage it, maybe tomorrow night? I bet you’d find some of them there. They have a lot of super obscure stuff. And the town isn’t too badly looted. There’s a lot left.”</p><p>“Really?” said Ellie. “Are there any people there?”</p><p>“No,” said Noah. “Not anymore.”</p><p>“Right,” she said.</p><p>They climbed back down the ladder. Noah said, "You wanna see the river?"</p><p>Ellie said yes. Hell yes. She did want to see the river. She'd never really seen a river, not a real one, not up close. Or at least she didn't feel like she had. They went along a little grass path. Ellie looked up some more, up at the stars, the Milky Way, listening to the nighttime birds and the crickets. Then they came to a river. Noah stopped, and she stopped. It was just this small thing, smaller than she had expected, maybe ten feet across, cutting through the grassy field, snaking around like a ribbon. It was enchanted, almost haunted, how it rippled. Little rapids, here and there. It was so beautiful.</p><p>“What's this river called?” she said.</p><p>"Technically it’s a creek,” he said, surveying, real pensive. “It flows out of the Kickapoo River, which is a tributary of the Mississippi.”</p><p>“Man,” she said."This whole place. It's like, perfect. Like a dream. In the QZ, we couldn't leave. We couldn't go outside the gates. If we did, and we got caught, they wouldn't let us come back. But here it’s like, you're free. Do you love it?"</p><p>“I guess,” said Noah. He’d set down the rucksack, his shotgun. “I mean, I don’t know anything else. You didn’t like living in Boston?”</p><p>“Not really,” said Ellie. “But I guess—I guess I didn’t really know that until I left with Joel.”</p><p>"Why'd you guys leave."</p><p>"Too dangerous, I guess. Some...bad stuff happened. In Boston it was pretty bad, but then in Pittsburgh...It’s a long story."</p><p>Noah waited, like maybe to see if she was going to keep talking. When she didn’t, he just said, “So he’s really not your dad, huh?” </p><p>“No,” said Ellie. “No. He’s just—Joel.”</p><p>“He seemed to get kind of worried when you left the house.”</p><p>“That’s how he is,” she said. “We’ve been through a lot together.”</p><p>“Like back in Pittsburgh?” he said.</p><p>She was watching the dark river in the moonlight, all unfolding, the tall grasses on the other side, blinking with fireflies. “Pretty much,” she said.</p><p>He took a deep breath then, which made her nervous. He got down to one knee, opened up the rucksack, and from inside, he took out a clear empty bottle from up in the Crow's Nest.</p><p>"What are you doing?" she said.</p><p>He didn't answer. He just blew the inside of the bottle dry, and then he dipped it into the river, filled it up with water. "It's not perfect here, Ellie," he said. “I know it seems perfect to you, and free, but it’s not.” He fashioned a lighter from his pocket, let it illuminate the bottle.</p><p>Ellie crouched down beside him, curious, but confused. She looked at the water in the bottle. She sensed a darkness, all around them. In Noah’s voice, hidden in the moonlight and the greenery of the terrain. But she didn't understand. "What do you mean?" she said. "Is this about what you said upstairs, how we shouldn't drink the water? What's wrong with it?"</p><p>"All the water, flowing out of the Mississippi, down from the north, is poisoned," he said.</p><p>"Poisoned,” she said, gazing into the light. “With what?”</p><p>He pocketed the lighter, tossed the bottle into the river. They watched it sink. “Spores.”</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Trench (Pt. 1 and 2)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>"I'm scared of ending up alone.”</em>
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          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <strong>1.</strong>
  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>She walked along the river, and she found him sitting on the grassy bank, with his feet in. He still had his boots on. “Don’t,” she said, crouching beside him. “You need to take off your boots first.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“No you don’t,” he said. He smiled. “Come try it out.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She sat down, but she didn’t put her feet in the water. The river bank was wet anyway. It was getting her jeans damp. She didn’t feel like taking off her boots. “I thought the whole point was to be free,” she said.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“You can be free any way you like,” he said. “That’s the definition of freedom.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I guess you’re right,” she said.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The big blue sky cast out above them as opals. There were no clouds. No anxious metal sounds. There were no fears.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I know you’re pregnant,” he said. He was staring at his boots in the water. “I saw the test.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She looked down at her hands. Everybody was always doing that. “You saw it?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“I didn’t mean to. You left it in the trash. Where did you even find one?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Amy,” she said. “She had some, from the Wal-mart. I had to pay her with two chickens.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Pretty good deal, considering.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Are you mad?” she said.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He looked at her with his brown eyes. Sometimes they could be hard as bolts. Today, they were soft. “Why would I be mad?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Because we didn’t mean it,” she said. “My dad is gonna kill me.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“No he won’t,” said Will. He took her hand and pressed his thumb against her knuckles. “Nobody is gonna die.”</em>
</p><p>Mom. Don’t go back.</p><p> </p><p>“Cici?”</p><p>She opened her eyes. When she looked around, she realized it was morning, well past the break of dawn. She had fallen asleep on the couch. She was looking at Joel now. He was standing in the middle of the living room, wearing a new tee-shirt but the same jeans. He had a rifle on his back, and a shotgun. He was looking confused. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. “I’m sorry. Hi.”</p><p>“You sleep down here last night?”</p><p>“Yeah,” she said. She put her feet on the ground, her face in her palms. “I was just reading, pretty late. I guess I must have been so tired. I slept through the night.”</p><p>“Well that ain’t so bad,” said Joel. He hooked his thumbs in his belt loops. “I was just, uh. I was gonna head out, with Noah. He’s gonna show me the work that needs doing on the perimeter. I’m sorry if I startled you.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” she said. “You said you’re going with Noah now?”</p><p>“Yes, ma’am. He says it shouldn’t take past lunch.”</p><p>“I’ll have something ready,” she said. Then, she looked around. “Is Ellie still asleep?”</p><p>“No,” said Joel. “She’s out, feeding the chickens and gathering eggs.”</p><p>“Oh. Okay, well, good.”</p><p>“I think she likes it here,” said Joel, glancing out the window. “She ain’t never spent time outdoors like this before. It’s good for her.”</p><p>“I’m glad,” said Cici. She was still sort of out of it. She got up and started walking to the kitchen. “Did Noah make any coffee this morning?”</p><p>Joel kind of paused. He seemed taken off-guard but he hid it well. “Noah didn’t mention any coffee,” he said.</p><p>“He probably just forgot,” she said, putting a kettle on the stove. “We scavenged a couple big bags from the roastery in town, a couple months ago. I mean, it ain’t fresh, but it does the trick. I can make you some, if you like. It’ll just be a minute.”</p><p>Joel walked over to the table. He leaned against one of the chairs. “Uh, sure,” he said. “Sure, that’d be fine.”</p><p>“You look dumbfounded,” she said. “Everything okay?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Joel. “Everything’s, uh, just fine. I just—I ain’t had coffee in a while.”</p><p>“How long?”</p><p>He glanced down at his watch, which she had noticed early on. It was broken, but she figured there was a good reason he must have kept wearing it, or else it could have just been habit. Grown men were like that, she knew. They just got to doing things for so long sometimes, they forgot why or how. They just kept doing it till they died. “Years,” he said.</p><p>“Well, you’re in luck then,” she said. “Would Ellie want some, or is she too young?”</p><p>“I don’t think she’d like the stuff,” said Joel.</p><p>“Noah doesn’t either,” she said.</p><p>Ellie came inside a moment later then, as Cici was boiling the water. She was holding a whole basket full of eggs and looking very pleased with herself. Noah followed behind her with his familiar shotgun set on his shoulder.</p><p>“Look at all these eggs,” said Ellie, holding up the basket. “Joel, do you see this?”</p><p>"I do.”</p><p>“Very good haul,” said Cici. The kettle was whistling. She started pouring the water over the grounds, through a cone, into a mug for Joel. “I’m just making Joel a quick cup of coffee, before you boys head down to the perimeter.”</p><p>“You guys got coffee?” said Ellie, sitting down at the table. “Holy shit, Joel. You must be freaking out.”</p><p>Joel then gave her a little bit of a side-eye. “I am not freaking out. Though I will admit, it’s a treat.”</p><p>Ellie started counting the eggs, one by one. "Anyway," she said. "What do you guys think you’ll see when you go down there? Is it pretty gnarly?"</p><p>“Hopefully we'll see nothing,” said Noah. He picked up an apple, from a blue porcelain bowl on the counter. “Hopefully we’ll just finish the trench, reset the mines, and be done.” He took a bite.</p><p>"Good," said Ellie.</p><p>“I’m just happy to see the two of you out of danger,” said Joel, sitting back in his chair. “Whatever I can do. This place deserves a second chance.”</p><p>Cici just focused on the coffee. She wanted it to be good.</p><p> </p><p>When they got outside, Noah took Joel out to the crow’s nest where he wanted to pick up a small canister of gasoline and a lighter and some other stuff, including the replacement mines, and a true blue improved explosive. That one, said Noah, was more or less just some parts his mom had made for a fancy pipe bomb, plus a proximity sensor. He had them up there stored in a backpack. When they got up to the top of the ladder, Joel notice the Pearl Jam poster and did a double-take. In some ways, being on that farm in the middle of nowhere, it felt like he had stepped through some sort of time warp.</p><p>“My dad liked them,” said Noah, reading his mind, pocketing a book of matches and loading his 9mm, which he then holstered in the waist of his jeans. “That was his.”</p><p>“That’s a blast from the past,” said Joel.</p><p>“What year were you born?” said Noah.</p><p>The question was surprising, and direct. Both Noah and Cici had these unfiltered ways about them in which they could sit in complete silence for multiple moments at a time, but then, out of nowhere, abruptly come to the truth, simply asking and saying the things they meant with very little pretense or warning. “Uh, 1984,” said Joel.</p><p>“Dang,” said Noah. “You’re as old as my Uncle Nick.”</p><p>“Who's Uncle Nick."</p><p>“My mom’s step-brother," said Noah. "He was old enough that he was in Iraq.”</p><p>“What year?”</p><p>“2004, I think, was the start of his first tour."</p><p>Joel took a deep breath. He had his hands on his hips as he was nodding his head to the memory. “Yeah, I knew a lot of guys that enlisted,” he said, “after 9/11, in 2003. At the time, it seemed like there was something to fight for. It wasn’t that uncommon where I grew up.”</p><p>“Did you enlist?” said Noah.</p><p>“No,” said Joel, glancing back to the poster. It was a silkscreen, from a concert in Madison, probably back in like 1996.</p><p>“Why not?”</p><p>“I thought about it, but I had—well, I had other responsibilities at the time.”</p><p>Noah just stared at him, unclear.</p><p>“Let’s get a move on,” said Joel.</p><p>It took them about twenty minutes to get all the way to the section of the perimeter that needed maintenance. Noah said this was an especially vulnerable spot, as it pushed right up against the woods, with a wide frontage to the Kickapoo River just a few miles away on the other side. To get there, they had to follow the creek, which was overgrown in some parts with a great deal of bramble. At some point, they emerged and then had to walk through about five acres of arable land that had gone to seed. There was also a fairly overgrown apple orchard, and a field of actual, farmed corn, plus a stable, in the distance. Most of the trek was downhill, but the sun was hot that day. They were cooking.</p><p>Noah didn’t talk much. Joel was getting a little apprehensive about what, exactly, it was they were going to run into out there. He knew they were going to finish digging a trench, and he knew they would have to navigate their way through a live minefield, using the map that Noah had stuffed in his back pocket. He trusted the kid, and he trusted Cici, but he still had no idea what the hell he was doing. Part of him was worried about getting a leg blown off. The other part was amped up, just in case they were set to run into a horde. There were a lot of trees out there, and he didn’t really understand how it was they had kept this place fully booby-trapped in such an organized fashion for so long all by themselves. But then he thought about Bill, back in Massachusetts and suddenly, based on his most recent memories of a life lived with Tess, in which the two of them survived mainly by navigating the loopholes of a fully-fledged but decaying QZ, he began to realize that perhaps the kind of hard work he was used to, in the grand scheme of things, wasn’t that difficult at all.</p><p>“You know, I asked your mom yesterday,” said Joel as they scaled down a shallow ridge overgrown with prickly shrubs, “about whether y’all had some idea of what’s been causing the increase in activity out here, with Infected.”</p><p>“What did she tell you?” said Noah.</p><p>“She told me to talk to you.”</p><p>When they got to the bottom of the ridge, they walked a little further out, through a meadow with a dry well. Up ahead, finally, they saw it—the minefield. It was on the other side of an electric fence, about ten feel high. The fence had barbed wire spooled along the top, but it didn’t seem to be properly electric anymore, as there was a huge hole cut in the links, which they took turns squeezing through.</p><p>“You know how I told you, the water, coming in from the Kickapoo, the Bad Axe, some other major tributaries off the Mississippi, it’s ain’t safe?” said Noah.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Joel.</p><p>“Well, one day,” said Noah—he had a machete, which he was now using to hack through some of bramble on the other side of the fence, “about a year and a half ago, we heard a distress call from the Amish. There used to be a whole huge family of them on the other side of them woods, over north. They didn’t use the radio, but they had a hand-powered siren, which they would use to signal any threats in the area.”</p><p>“These the Amish that got the scrapyard?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Noah. “They were called the Lapps, before. Anyway, when the siren went off, my dad and my uncle went over there, and some of the other guys in the area that we knew. They thought they were gonna find maybe some reavers, or a small horde, wandering in from the town. But when they got there, it was like, the whole entire family was turning. Every single one of them, like dozens of people, infected, at the same time. It was insane, my dad said. It was starting to rain, so my dad and my uncle, they just herded them all into the barn and locked them in, and then they came home. They said it was bizarre. If one person gets infected and starts turning other people, why did the distress call come in so late? Why weren’t there more dead? Everybody was just sick, they said. All at once, as if they'd all been infected at the same time.”</p><p>Joel was focused on his footing, stepping through the tall grasses. There were so many grasshoppers, you couldn’t count. “Did you figure out what caused it?"</p><p>“Eventually,” said Noah. “We were used to using a well, which draws on a aquifer, under the ground, for our water. But the Amish, after the Outbreak in 2013, they apparently started hauling their water in straight from the river, fished it all the time.”</p><p>“Spores in the river?”</p><p>“In all the rivers,” said Noah.</p><p>“How?”</p><p>“All the tributaries coming into the floodplain, they’re all contaminated. A couple of travelers came through not long after the outbreak at the Lapp farm. They said that every city up and down the Mississippi, and on a major tributary, everywhere is going nuts with Infected. They said that, in La Crosse, you could see the Cordyceps, growing right off the banks. There was something going on.”</p><p>“Jesus.”</p><p>“So like a year ago,” Noah continued, “all of us—me, my mom, my dad, and my uncle, we went up to La Crosse.” He stopped in his tracks then, took a long drink of water from a canteen in his backpack.</p><p>“What happened?” said Joel.</p><p>“We got cornered by a horde before we could make it into the city,” he said, “in a church just south of Shelby. There was a fire. My mom and me got out, barely. My dad and my uncle didn’t. By the time the two of us got back to Viroqua, the rest of the Amish in the area had either abandoned their farms, or turned. The whole town, anybody left in this part of the Driftless, they were almost all of them gone. Dead, turned, or gone.”</p><p>Joel felt heavy, blindsided. He looked at his boots in the tall grass, getting wet from the river marsh. When he looked up now, he could see it there, in its glory: the minefield. Just like a long, flat expanse of grass that spread out, stretching around the property, maybe about twenty yards deep. On the other side of the minefield was the trench, and then a whole lot of trees, growing up the side of a wooded ridge. “Everything you just told me, that’s all true?” he said.</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“Jesus Christ, kid.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“You said there are others in the area. The Amish who got the scrapyard. Some of them survived?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Noah. “One of the families had been on a supply run, eastward, during the outbreak. They came back, and they stayed. They still live over the hill. There are a few others, a couple families here and there. My Aunt Amy, she was married to my Uncle Nick, she left a little bit after we got back from La Crosse, went down to the Quad Cities with her daughter. They had family down there, on Amy’s side, in Moline. We’ve tried to keep tabs on what’s going on down there, but it all went dark a while ago. I have no idea if they made it.”</p><p>“So you think the Infected, they’re coming down the river, with the spores.”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>“And you don’t know why, or how, the water became like it is? Because it ain’t like that in the northeast. Spores infecting people through the water supply is news to me.”</p><p>“We don’t know what’s causing it,” said Noah. “We know there’s something going on in La Crosse, but we’ve never gone back.”</p><p>Joel took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry, son,” he said. “I am. That’s a tough hand.”</p><p>“Thanks,” said Noah, shaking his head. “But I doubt it’s any worse than your sob story, or Ellie’s, or any of the other sob stories you must hear traveling around these days.”</p><p>“That don’t matter,” said Joel. He regarded Noah, whose cynicism was familiar to his own. “In the grand scheme of things, one loss might seem meaningless, but just because a lot of people are dying that don’t mean the people that you lose, that their lives held any less significance to you when they were still alive. You get that?”</p><p>Noah was just staring at him, as if the words he was hearing were foreign, or new. He did, however, nod stiffly, and then he looked away. Joel didn’t know if it had gotten through. He just felt for the boy.</p><p>“All the shit we need to do, it’s up there,” said Noah.</p><p>Joel squinted past the minefield toward the trench. “It looks like it’s nearly finished.”</p><p>“It is,” he said. “The Infected tripped two mines and one bomb yesterday. We’ll clean up the trench, and then we'll replace the explosives. With you here, it’ll be fast.”</p><p>“What are the odds we’re gonna run into Infected out there at that trench?” said Joel. “There’s a lot of trees.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Noah. He took the map out of his back pocket, unfolded it. It was hand-drawn in blue pen. “They hang out in there sometimes, because it’s cool. They get lost, and then they freak out if they hear you. Just like, stay alert. And while we’re in the minefield, follow in my footsteps exactly so that you don’t blow up. We’ll go slow.”</p><p>Joel sighed profoundly. He closed his eyes, gathered his courage, prayed to the good lord nothing would happen, knowing it was fruitless, but doing it anyway. “Alright then," he said. </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>
    <em>2.</em>
  </strong>
</p><p>By noon, they had finished the trench. The sun was high, and they were both sweating and starving, ready for some respite. Joel watched Noah assemble the pipe bomb while leaning against a shovel in the shade of a lavish white oak. Noah had about him a sense of precision that suggested he had been doing this sort of thing from a very young age. </p><p>“Where the hell did y’all learn to do all this?” said Joel. His gray tee-shirt was almost soaked through with sweat. He was dirty and he could feel the sunburn on the back of his neck.</p><p>“My Uncle Nick,” he said. “The one who was in Iraq.”</p><p>“That what he did over there?” said Joel.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Noah. “It was basically his whole job to disarm these things. He also went to some African countries after his initial tours for demining operations.”</p><p>“Goddam. That’s some brave business.”</p><p>“Still took a zombie apocalypse and a church fire to kill him,” said Noah, digging out an impression in the dirt with his bare hands. “Fucking clown world.”</p><p>“You’re telling me,” said Joel. “You almost done?”</p><p>“Yeah.”</p><p>“Well, I’m gonna go take a leak,” said Joel, looking around. “You good?”</p><p>Noah nodded, working carefully. “Just be careful.”</p><p>“I will,” said Joel.</p><p> </p><p>After showing her how to sheer a sheep that morning, Cici showed Ellie all the different, easy parts you need to make a perfectly compact pipe bomb. “You can take it with you anywhere,” she said. “You can make them fancy, but they don’t need to be fancy. This gets the job done.”</p><p>They were out in the shed, which was more or less a workspace. It was all full of guns, assembled and in pieces, hanging on the wall, and in piles. There were axes, machetes, and two grindstones. There were shelves and shelves of different sized containers and wires, all colors and lengths, lining the walls. As Cici worked, Ellie sat on the tool bench, watching, rapt, by the good light coming through the window. “Where did you learn to do all this?” she said eventually.</p><p>“From my step-brother,” said Cici. “He was an EOD specialist in the Army.”    </p><p>“What’s that stand for?”</p><p>“Explosive Ordnance Disposal.”</p><p>"That’s insane,” said Ellie. “Back in Boston, we had some demolition training, but it was basically just like, how to make five different versions of a Molotov cocktail.”</p><p>“Those work pretty well, too,” said Cici.</p><p>“Later, I met this guy, Bill—he knows Joel—and he had basically trip-wired this entire little town where he lived. He showed Joel how to make nail bombs, too.”</p><p>“Nail bombs are not that much different than what we’re doing here,” said Cici. “Maybe a little cruder.”</p><p>“Seems a lot cruder.”</p><p>“So how do you like it?” said Cici. “Traveling with him? With Joel.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” said Ellie. She rested her chin on her knees. “He’s kind of...terse. Just sometimes though. He doesn’t talk much. When he does, I don't know. It’s okay. He seems a little stern, I know, but he's really not that bad.”</p><p>“He said you lost some people, back east. In Boston. And in Pittsburgh. I just—I wanted to say I’m sorry. That must have been really hard, and really scary.”</p><p>Ellie looked down at her Converse. One of them had come untied. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s not really...easy. I guess.”</p><p>“No, it isn’t.” Cici completed the pipe bomb, set it neatly on the workbench between them, like a cake. She didn’t press for details, on Boston, or Pittsburgh. “Voilà,” she said.</p><p>Ellie was oddly comforted. “That’s so freakin cool,” she said.</p><p> </p><p>Back at the house, Cici got Ellie started on making a new loaf of bread. Meanwhile, she sliced up a fresh loaf from the pantry and set about making sandwiches.</p><p>“So, you go from making bombs to making sandwiches, huh?” said Ellie. She was standing at the counter kneading the dough. It was squishy, she thought. Weirdly satisfying.</p><p>“Pretty much,” said Cici. She had prepared four tall ham and cheese sandwiches, on sourdough. Simple fare. For the them, and for Joel and Noah. “Sometimes, we watch movies. Maybe we can watch one tonight.”</p><p>“This is my kind of living,” said Ellie.</p><p>They smiled at each other.</p><p>But then.</p><p>“What the fuck was that?” said Ellie.</p><p>They heard the mines going off, one by one, well into the distance. A rapid succession. Too many.</p><p>"Cici?"</p><p>“Shit."</p><p>"Was that the mines?" said Ellie. "Are they okay? What the fuck?"</p><p> </p><p>In the trees, Joel zipped up and resituated himself. The thicket out there beyond the trench was quite beautiful. The nature sounds were almost deafening but in a way that suggested an earthly innocence. Joel was used to wearing a backpack, but with a home nearby, he didn’t really need one that day, so he felt light, despite the sweat and the physical exhaustion. Oddly enough, it had felt good to dig and to use his strength for something productive. Rather than killing, he was building for once. It had been a long time. He took the shotgun off his shoulder and checked the rounds. The sound it made was metal and ran in cacophony to the ongoing symphony of the trees.</p><p>He’d gone out maybe only ten yards or so, from Noah, who he could no longer hear but he could still see, through a crack in the foliage. He had made sure not to get beyond sight. Ready to head back, he put the gun strap back over his shoulder and took a step, breaking a twig beneath his boot, and the sound should have been innocuous, but instead, it seemed to trigger a familiar, inhuman noise nearby, and then that seemed to trigger another.</p><p>Joel swore under his breath, pumped the shotgun, and waited. He stood very still and listened to the cicadas clicking off in the trees in that ongoing rhythm, and out the corner of his eye he then saw something woman-shaped dart between a break in the foliage. If he truly parsed the noise of the thicket he could hear their heavy, frantic breathing. It was stalkers.</p><p>In slow silence he backed out of the thicket and made his way back to Noah at the trench. Noah was finishing up his wiring of the pipe bomb to the motion sensor and said something about how they were pretty much all set to go, whenever Joel was ready. Joel shushed him.</p><p>“Fuck,” said Noah, in a whisper. He picked up his shotgun off the earth. “What is it?”</p><p>“Stalkers,” said Joel. “I caught sight of one, but there’s more.”</p><p>"If we stay quiet, we can—”</p><p>But it was too late. They heard unsteady footsteps coming up the thicket. Raising their guns, they waited. A runner, looked to be a man, dressed in fishing gear stumbled out of the trees, bloodied up, shivering and afraid. Joel and Noah tried to stand perfectly still, but it saw them, and they were backed against the minefield, and it was no choice. Joel blew the thing’s jaw clean off. It dropped to the soil in silence, but the sound of the gun brought the stalkers out of the trees.</p><p>“Follow as close as you can,” said Noah.</p><p>“I will. Now go.”</p><p>It happened fast. As they navigated the mines, the sounds of the Infected in the woods rose up behind them in a maelstrom. There were way too many, maybe two dozen, must have been dormant in there, fucking lulled under the shade. When they got to the fence, Joel and Noah slipped back through the other side, turning around to watch a whole shitload, gnashing through the trees and descending upon the perimeter in total disorganization. Several fell into the trench, and the rest tripped the mines, plus the brand new pipe bomb, causing loud explosions that shrouded the whole field in a cloud of dust and smoke.</p><p>Joel and Noah hit the earth. It was so loud, Joel could feel the ringing in his ears vibrating in his teeth, and when, as he caught his bearings, he finally looked up, realizing it wasn’t over, Noah was dragging him to his feet, shouting something incomprehensible. Then, <em>GET BACK. </em>Scrambling into the tall grass, Joel watched as Noah lit up the canister of gasoline with a couple rags and chucked it as far and hard as he could past the barbed wire spools over the fence. When it landed, it blew to high heaven and in its wake, the sounds of all the Infected leftover from the mines turned to chaotic agony. There were birds dismounting from the trees in all directions, squawking. Then, a deadly quiet.</p><p>“Fucking shit,” said Noah, stumbling backward. He fell to his hands and knees, coughing from the dust.</p><p>As the ringing died down in his ears and in his molars, the afternoon seemed to crack wide open. Joel was on his back, staring up at the clear blue sky. “You okay?” he said.</p><p>Noah was heaving now, out of breath, covered in the detritus from head to toe. He walked over, held out his hand, hauled Joel back to his feet. “Yeah,” he said. “You?”</p><p>“I’m okay,” said Joel. He dusted himself off, still coughing and waving his way through the dust. He tripped forward to the fence and pressed into it, trying to make anything out at at all in the minefield. He could see some of the blistering bodies, smell the explosive energy, the roasting, human carnage. It was horrific. Then, he saw the trench. “Goddammit,” he said. “The whole thing is pulled up again.</p><p>Noah was keeled over, squinting out at the trees. “This place is fucked,” he said, more to himself than anything. “Lets get the fuck out of here.”</p><p> </p><p>Cici took the walkie out of her back pocket. She shouted into it for a while, but nobody answered. She then rushed them out of the house.</p><p>"Where are we going?" said Ellie.</p><p>"Crow’s nest.”</p><p>Up the ladder, Ellie felt like she was just blowing in the wind, no direction. But Cici had kicked into some sort of military high gear. She was holding a sniper rifle, which Ellie did not remember seeing her grab. She then handed Ellie a loaded rifle of her own, which had been hanging on a hook by the door. It felt heavy and wooden, but Ellie understood it. Cici asked if Ellie knew what to do.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Ellie, shaken. “Joel showed me. In Pittsburgh."</p><p>She then handed Ellie a pair of binoculars, told her to watch the horizon, westerly. Ellie did as she was told.</p><p>The sun was hot. There were no clouds. The sky was big and blue, as a gem. She spotted a few plumes of smoke at the perimeter, but she didn't see Noah or Joel. If she couldn't see Joel, she didn’t know what she was supposed to be looking for. All those explosions had sent her into an adrenaline-baked sort of panic, so that when Cici finally got Noah on the walkie, Ellie was so fucking relieved, she let go of the binoculars so that they thudded to the floor. She felt stupid, picked them up immediately, but then closed her eyes and felt an unexpected flood, again. Like she wanted to go home. Whatever that meant. But it was really powerful. She thought she might puke. She held it inside. “Holy shit,” she said.</p><p>“We’re okay,” said Noah over the walkie. “Infected ambushed us at the trench. But it’s done. Over.”</p><p>“Thank fucking god,” said Cici. “Me and Ellie got the scope on your location, just in case. Over.”</p><p>“Thanks,” said Noah. “I’m pretty sure they’re all fried. But they took the trench with them, and a bunch of the mines. We had to light up the rest with gasoline. The whole section is fucked up, even worse than before. Over.”</p><p>“Jesus Christ,” said Cici, hanging her head. “Okay. You boys just get back here. Over.”</p><p>“Okay."</p><p>
  <em>Over.</em>
</p><p>Ellie watched then as Cici set down the walkie and leaned, slowly, against the rifle, almost struggling to keep her balance. She had her eyes pressed shut, as if praying. Her blond hair was braided over her shoulder, but the plaits were all loose now. “Fuck,” she said, in a whisper.</p><p>"They're okay," said Ellie.</p><p>But Cici was talking to herself then. Not in a crazy way, just a stressed way, almost like she had forgotten that Ellie was in the room. “I can’t do this anymore,” she was saying. </p><p>
  <em>"That’s my fucking brother," he said.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>She was not okay, in the radio tower.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>"Screw it."</em>
</p><p>Ellie went over to Cici and placed her hand on Cici’s shoulder. She didn’t want to be standing there alone anymore, and the smell of the smoke was starting to waft in with the breeze. </p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Living Room Jam Session</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p><em>"There are a million ways we should have died before today, and a million ways we can die before tomorrow. But we fight, for every second we get to spend with each other. Whether it's two minutes, or two days, we don't give that up. I don't wanna give that up."</em><br/>  </p>
</div>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <strong>On the record player:</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>"Josephine" by The Wallflowers (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EG8MTnv2nrY">youtube</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/7vurIF6hIX3i1Qrb5oma7W?si=sdLRfcVhRMOCECOA8t7QaA">spotify</a>)<br/>"Future Days" by Pearl Jam (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nigF1ulBCQE">youtube</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/22sDLvlzAJzH0BHiMSOfRP?si=L5QgPQ4RQrGiOFWV6FRZCQ">spotify</a>)<br/>"The Scientist" by Coldplay (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gm-Y9idMMQ4">youtube</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/75JFxkI2RXiU7L9VXzMkle?si=nuACgPhoTe20TX76No3AIg">spotify</a>)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>That night, Cici went out to the circuit breaker next to the shed, and she switched on the electric fence. It worked after all.</p><p>“It’ll use up a lot of fuel,” she said to Joel. “But we can’t risk it.”</p><p>The farm was peaceful. Almost like nothing had ever happened. A couple cows had escaped, earlier that day. Joel had offered to help wrangle them, but Noah said don’t bother. “We can’t feed them anyway." He shrugged. He slaughtered a cow in the early evening. He showed Joel how to clean and butcher the meat, and how to salt and cure it for longer term use. They had steaks for dinner that night, prepared this time with a few potatoes, seasoned with dill from the garden, which was picked almost clean.</p><p>Joel was beginning to gather that their time on that farm was coming to a rapid conclusion. They couldn’t stay there, not much longer. If there were spores in the tributaries, that meant they could get into the water table, too. Cici and Noah knew this. They had been making four hour drives to the Fox River in Fon du Lac for several months now, bringing back water sourced from Green Bay. They said this was how they were able to trade for their fuel for the generators, from the Amish on the other side of the hill—making long drives to clean water. Even with the rain, they could no longer water their crops or sustain their livestock, and the Infected were becoming more of a threat every day. They had a lot of reserves, but it was only a matter of time before they ran out of food, or worse. Like Cici had said, him and Ellie showing up like they had, it was almost happenstance.</p><p>“I can get you your fuel tomorrow,” said Cici. They were still outside, leaning against a tree, looking at the circuit breaker. “You made good on your bargain. Thank you, Joel.”</p><p>Joel had got a big old cut on his forehead from the events down at the trench. She had patched it up for him with alcohol and gauze. Hadn’t made a fuss, just did it. “Cici, I know we ain’t known each other that long, but I ain’t leaving you and Noah here to deal with this all by yourselves.”</p><p>“You don’t owe us anything.”</p><p>“I know that,” said Joel. “And trust me, I been wrestling with it myself. But it don’t change anything.”</p><p>Cici straightened up off the tree and looked around. Her hair was down now, kind of tangly and windswept. Noah and Ellie were inside the house. “Noah said he told you about La Crosse.”</p><p>Joel looked down at the grass as if to count the moonlit blades. “He didn’t go into a lot of detail,” he said. “But yes, he gave me the gist. Said your husband, he died in a fire. I’m sorry, Cici. I truly am.”</p><p>She just shrugged her shoulders. “We never got to find out, what’s been going on,” she said, blinking back tears. “We couldn’t stay, after it happened, and then we couldn’t go back.”</p><p>“Noah wants me to come with him,” said Joel. “Back. To La Crosse. He asked me after dinner.”</p><p>“There’s no point,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do. Even if you find the source of the problem, the farm is too far gone to save.”</p><p>“I think it’s more about closure,” said Joel. “He didn’t say as much, but I get it. I told him I’d go. I hope I ain’t crossing any lines in doing so.”</p><p>She closed her eyes.</p><p>“Me and him are gonna head up tomorrow,” he went on. “I figure, the sooner the better. Shouldn’t take more than a couple days. I was gonna ask if you wanted to come with us, or if you'd be okay staying here, with Ellie. I don’t want to take her, because she’s just a kid, and she’s been through enough, and I don’t know what the hell we’re getting into up there, but I won’t leave her here alone.”</p><p>“It’s okay,” said Cici. She didn’t even try to argue. “I’ll stay. I don’t—I can’t go back there anyway.”</p><p>“Do y’all have anywhere to go?” said Joel. “I mean, aside from this farm? Noah mentioned family down in Moline. The I-80 runs right through there. I don’t know what we’ll find, but we could take you.”</p><p>Cici shook her head slowly, staring at the earth. “My sister-in-law was trying to get back there like six months ago. She said she’d come back for us, if it was all clear, but we never heard from her again.”</p><p>“I heard about some turf wars going on in the Quad Cities,” said Joel. “Just warning you. It was the kind of place too small for a QZ, but it was too big and too isolated to try and save. The military all but abandoned it. Now that was years ago. Things could have changed. Either way, it’s right on the Mississippi, so if your little problem extends into Illinois and Iowa, it probably ain’t gonna be pretty. But we can try.”</p><p>She took a deep breath, and she opened and closed her fists a couple times. She had little bones. She was small, but she wasn’t a weakling. “I wanna think about it.”</p><p>“Okay.”</p><p>“Let’s go inside,” she said, pulling herself together. She had this way of tucking her hair behind her ears. It was like hitting a reset button or something. Truth be told, he was a little confounded by Cici. Not in a bad way. He just found it very hard to predict her, despite her seeming steadfastness, as a woman. “Ellie and Noah are into the vinyls," she went on. "Who knows what they’ve got playing in there.”</p><p>“You guys got a ton of records,” said Joel as they headed back to the porch in the moonlit grass. “What is it with that? You just collectors or something?”</p><p>“My husband was,” she said. “William. He used to say that if the apocalypse ever came, at least we’d still be able to listen to music.”</p><p>“Well, he was right,” said Joel.</p><p>The seemed to comfort her. He saw her almost smile, out the corner of his eye.</p><p> </p><p>“What’s this band called again?” said Ellie. She was sitting on her knees on the floor, in the middle of a big old pile of records. Noah was on the floor nearby, sifting through the pile one-by-one. It had been a long time since he’d really taken inventory, since before his dad died. </p><p>He picked up the vinyl, examined it front and back. “The Wallflowers.”</p><p>“The Wallflowers?” said Ellie. “Weird name, but I like it.”</p><p>“Do you know what a wallflower is?”</p><p>“Uh,” said Ellie, “like a flower that…grows out of the wall?”</p><p>Noah was amused. “It’s a metaphor. It’s like, somebody who stands on the sidelines. They don’t really get in on the action.”</p><p>“Oh, that makes sense,” said Ellie.</p><p>“The singer for this band is Bob Dylan’s son.”</p><p>“Neat,” said Ellie. “Who’s Bob Dylan again?”</p><p>Noah started going through a stack on his left, where he kept the sixties stuff. “This guy,” he said.</p><p>“Ah,” said Ellie. “The <em>Blowing in the Wind </em>guy. Very cool.”</p><p>“Did you guys ever listen to music in the QZ?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Ellie, “but we didn’t have records. And everything I wanted, I had to steal or trade for with my ration cards. It was like, music or food sometimes. I had a walkman though, so I would just listen to tapes.”</p><p>“Do you still have it?”</p><p>“No,” said Ellie. “It broke like a thousand miles ago.”</p><p>“Bummer,” said Noah.</p><p>“Pretty much.”</p><p>They listened to the song. It was called “Josephine.” <em>I know you’ve been sad. I know I’ve been bad. But if you’d let me, I’d make you ribbons from a paper bag.</em></p><p>“What do you think this song is about?” said Ellie.</p><p>Noah thought about it, looking up at the ceiling. “I think it’s like, the end of a relationship,” he said. “The guy messed up, but he doesn’t feel like he’s good enough for Josephine anyway. He’s apologizing, and he knows he can’t get her back, but he still loves her. That’s what I get from it, but it sounds dumb as hell when I say it out loud.”</p><p>Ellie examined the sleeve. It was just a whole bunch of yellow stars on a black background. “It’s not dumb,” she said. “It’s just really sad. Why doesn’t he think he’s good enough?”</p><p>“I don’t know,” said Noah. “Why does anyone think anything?”</p><p>Ellie thought this was kind of funny. “Good point.”</p><p>“Let’s try this one,” said Noah.</p><p>He took the Wallflowers record off the platter, put a new record on.</p><p>“What’s this?” said Ellie. “<em>Lightning Bolt. </em>Pearl Jam? I think I’ve actually heard of these guys.”</p><p>“This one’s got a story behind it. You want to hear?”</p><p>Ellie straightened right up. “Hell yeah.”</p><p>“Okay,” said Noah, looking down at the sleeve. It was like this big, red eye, full of white lightning bolt decals. “So apparently like, this album was supposed to be released a few weeks after the day the outbreak officially hit in 2013. It got pushed back like everything else, and then the stores all closed and it just like, never happened. My dad had really been looking forward to it, so like six weeks after shit went dark, him and some guys went to a Best Buy up in Madison and looted all these unreleased vinyls from the warehouse.”</p><p>“Holy shit,” said Ellie. “That’s fucking awesome.”</p><p>“I know. He said he had to get by military guys and everything.”</p><p>“Dude, your dad was a total badass,” said Ellie. “You should be proud.”</p><p>At first Noah got quiet. Ellie hadn’t thought anything of it. She’d never had a dad, or a mom, or anyone to be proud of like that. She just thought it was so unbelievably rad that he had a story like this to tell other people, about his dad. Eventually, Noah smiled. She smiled along with him. He said, “There’s one song on here I like a lot.”</p><p>“Play it,” she said. “As long as it’s not about people breaking up. Because that shit sucks.”</p><p>“It’s not,” said Noah.</p><p>He set down the needle, and together, they listened.</p><p>The song was slow and beautiful, thought Ellie, but it grew. Piano—crisp and clean and rushing as the river—gave way to a man’s voice and the guitar, big as a boat. She sat without talking. She tucked her hands in her lap and looked down at her wrists. She closed her eyes and tried hard to let the music overwhelm her. It was hard for Ellie to let things overwhelm her. She wore heavy armor. She would make a joke. She would roll her eyes. </p><p>But this was different than the other song, thought Ellie. It was sad, maybe sentimental, but it was a good kind of sentimental. <em>All the missing crooked hearts, they may die, but in us they live on. I believe. I believe 'cause I can see. Our future days. Days of you and me.</em> It was strong, and it seemed to be about trying. Like, trying to be better, through the eyes of someone else. Loving, and being loved, even when it’s hard. You have to try. It put her back in time, almost to another universe, but she hammered it away. She liked this song much better than the last song. She wished to live inside the music.</p><p>When it ended, she looked at Noah, who was looking at the ceiling again, leaning back on his hands and listening, with intent. The song had filled the house with a purifying energy and brought it down, made it simple. The bad things that had happened that day, they were clean.</p><p>“That one was awesome,” said Ellie.</p><p>“Are you okay?” said Noah. He seemed like he was half-joking, but sort of earnest. It was enough joking to make her smile, but not too earnest to freak her out.</p><p>“Oh,” said Ellie, looking down at her shoe laces. “I’m fine. I just—these songs sort of remind me of someone I once knew. In another life I guess.”</p><p>Noah waited what seemed like a long time before he spoke again. He was mulling it over, with his elbows now resting on his knees. Then he said, “I get that.”</p><p>They played the song again. Then, they couldn’t take it anymore. They took it off and put on some emo shit by a band called Coldplay. It was kind of terrible, they agreed, but they listened anyway, as it was like a dream.</p><p> </p><p>A little while later, Joel and Cici came back inside. Joel held the door for her and once they were in the living room, raised his eyebrows and made fun of the Coldplay.</p><p>“You guys okay in here?” he said. “Sounds like you made a wrong turn somewhere.”</p><p>“Oh, we’re great, Joel,” said Ellie. “You guys are seriously missing out on our jam session.”</p><p>“Ha,” said Cici.</p><p>Joel stretched and got real big, and then he leaned against the kitchen table. He seemed kind of faded, thought Ellie. He had that cut on his eye. He seemed very tired. “It’s been a long day,” he said. “I think I’m ready to head up. You wanna come Ellie, or you fixing to stay awake a while longer?”</p><p>Ellie got up and wiped her hands on her jeans. They’d gotten kind of dusty from handling all the vinyls. “I’ll come up,” she said. “I’m pretty wiped.”</p><p>“I’ll have breakfast ready early,” said Cici.</p><p>“Sounds fine,” said Joel.</p><p>“See you guys in the morning,” said Noah. He glanced up at Ellie then, as if thankful for something.</p><p> </p><p>When they got upstairs, Ellie went to look in the mirror on the bureau and she took down her ponytail. Her hair felt like a rat’s nest. She started to brush it out, aggressively.</p><p>“Where’d you get that hair brush?” said Joel, taking his shoes off.</p><p>“Cici let me borrow it,” she said.</p><p>“Right,” said Joel. He put his face in his hands then, scrubbed them down his cheeks. “Ellie—"</p><p>She stopped mid-brush, turned around. “Noah told me about La Crosse,” she said. “I wanna come.”</p><p>Joel took a deep breath, as this had caught him by surprise. “Ellie, no.”</p><p>“Well what the fuck?” she said. She set down the brush on the bureau, hard. “Why the hell not?”</p><p>He just took to staring at her. She wasn’t actually that mad, he thought, she just seemed genuine in her confusion. “Because,” he said. “I got no idea what we’re walking into up there.”</p><p>“Oh, but you did in Pittsburgh, when you drove us straight into a fucking trap?”</p><p>“That is beside the point.”</p><p>“How, Joel?” said Ellie. “Noah is only four years older than me. I can hold my own.”</p><p>“Those are four critical years, Ellie,” said Joel. He was trying not to raise his voice. “And honestly, it don’t matter whether you can hold your own, because this thing going on in, it ain’t about you. It ain’t about me neither. You understand? It’s about Noah atoning with his dad’s death. He needs help, and he asked me, and I am providing that for him.”</p><p>“I can help,” said Ellie.</p><p>“I know you two get along,” said Joel. “But you're helping most by staying put.”</p><p>“What about Cici? She doesn’t wanna go?”</p><p>Joel waved her off, started rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. “No,” he said. “Cici’s made her peace. Or what’s left of it.”</p><p>“She doesn’t seem…at peace.”</p><p>“I didn’t say she was at peace. I just said she’s made her peace.” Ellie seemed to understand this, and now, he could tell she was just scared, of being left behind. “Look, Ellie,” he said, shaking his head. “You can’t come. That’s the end of this conversation. But we’ll only be gone a couple nights. You got Cici with you. She might seem quiet, but I think she's pretty hardcore, and you two got the electric fence. Me and Noah, we’ll be okay.”</p><p>“I know,” said Ellie, like she was defending herself. She had flipped open her switch blade, was studying the tip. “I know.”</p><p>“We good then?” said Joel.</p><p>She hesitated, but then she closed up the knife and flopped back onto the bed. “Fine,” she said.</p><p>He was relieved.</p><p>“But then you better fucking bring something back for me.”</p><p>This surprised him. He gave her a look. “Bring something back?” he said. “Like a souvenir?”</p><p>“Yeah,” she said. “A souvenir.”</p><p>“A souvenir from La Crosse?”</p><p>“You heard me.”</p><p>Joel tugged the covers back, was getting ready to crawl beneath. The day had become a heavy weight, all of it resting right on his eye lids. He was glad it was all okay. “All right,” he said, yawning. “I’ll see what I can find.”</p><p>“Good,” she said.</p><p>“Now get some goddam sleep.”</p><p>“Ay ay, cap’n.”</p><p>A few minutes went by. Joel was about ready to get under the covers for good when Ellie said, “I gotta pee.”</p><p>He looked at her. “Now?”</p><p>“I’ll be fine.”</p><p>“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Just—just be quick.”</p><p>“You think I wanna take my time peeing in that thing? Outhouses are like the one bad thing about this place. Other than the whole, contaminated-water part, I guess.”</p><p>Joel took a breath, told her he would leave his lamp on. “Just hurry, and turn the lamp down when you get back.”</p><p>“I will,” she said.</p><p>           </p><p>Ellie went pee in the outhouse and did her best not to make any sounds. When she got out, she didn't feel tired, so she went over and stood by the river like a detour. She did not plan on staying long. She just looked at it, right down into it, and then it blinked back at her like the little bitch it was, bubbling deceptively in the moonlight. She  suddenly hated that something so innocent could also be so deadly, and so fucking sad. The night was cooling down but it was still humid. She switched open her knife and wiped the sweat from her forehead on the back of her hand. She switched her knife closed again, then open again. She tried thinking about anything else, but that stupid Pearl Jam song had awakened something inside her.</p><p>“<em>I haven’t seen you in…in I don’t know how long,” she said.</em></p><p>
  <em>"Forty-five days?” said Riley. She was nervous. “Well, forty-six. Technically. Wanna know what I’ve been up to?”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>The rain outside was like a drum. Ellie didn’t care. “All this time,” she said. “I thought you were dead.”</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Riley felt everything, but just like everybody else in the whole wide world, she couldn’t show it. “Yeah,” she said. And she took off the dog tag. “Here. Look.”</em>
</p><p> </p><p>“God fucking dammit,” said Ellie. She was on her knees now, overcome by something, and she stabbed the knife into the river bank. “Stupid fucking bullshit. Fuck you.” She stabbed it again, and then she felt like a complete dumbass, put it away. She thought about crying but she stared back at the river instead. “Go away,” she said.</p><p>“Ellie?” said someone. It was Cici, she was calling out to her from the porch. It must have been too long. “Ellie, you okay?”</p><p>“Shit,” said Ellie. "I'm okay." She got up, frantic, and her knees were all wet from the river bank. “I'm okay. I'm coming."</p><p>"Just checking," said Cici.</p><p> </p><p>When she got back up to their room, Joel was under the covers. The lamp was dim. He lie very still, on his side, facing the wall, and she stood watching him for a second to see if he'd roll over and scold her or something. But he seemed like he was sleeping, and she was relieved. She didn't know why she cared, but she did. So she turned down the lamp right away and tried to be as quiet as she could so as not to disturb him. She took off her shoes and set them down silently, one by one. Then she took her jeans off, too, hung them over the bedpost to dry. She only had the one pair. She got under the covers and pulled them up to her chin, trying to sink into the mattress, forcing her brain to shut the fuck up. Please. For once, just shut the fuck up. But then,</p><p>“'Night, Ellie,” said Joel. He had not moved, by the dim light of the moon coming through the window.</p><p>She was near on startled. His voice was really deep and it always filled the room no matter how quiet. “Oh, shit,” she said. “Sorry, Joel."</p><p>"That's okay," he said.</p><p>
  <em>Days of you and me.</em>
</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. La Crosse (Pt. 1) / The Lapp Farm (Pt. 1)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>"Well, is that everything you hoped for?"</em>
    <br/>
  </p>
</div>
          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They found the church in a valley surrounded by dead trees. The main road was blocked and they’d had to hike for a long while off of Highway 61 to find it—through an elementary school campus, an old cemetery, which had been flooded so many times it seemed that certain of bones had begun to rise to the surface of the soil. The church was huge, thought Joel, much bigger than he had expected, with a rotunda and several wings extending in multiple directions. The building was old and made of stone, so much of it still stood, aside from the many rooftops. All was blackened and charred. It was clearly a Catholic church, but there were no indications left as to what it was called.</p><p>Noah stood out front, holding his shotgun. Joel stood a little ways behind him, unsure of what was going to happen, or how he should proceed. There were no signs of Infected on the way into the church grounds. The whole valley was wiped. They had only encountered a few signs, which looked old. They were makeshift, slabs of wood with black spray paint. They had said, simply:  <strong><em>C O T H S</em></strong>, most with directional arrows pointing them toward the city. Some had what looked to be flowers, painted hastily around the letters. Noah had no idea what they meant, but he said they were there last time, too.           </p><p>“The horde ambushed us by the side of the road,” he said, switching his shotgun from one hand to the other. “We had stopped to figure out where we were. The signs and the blockades got us confused.”</p><p>The sounds of nature, as usual, were deafening all around them. Noah began his story.</p><p>“We came up around the opposite side,” he said. “From behind the church. The cemetery and the elementary school, those were all full of Infected when I was here last. There was a big like, storm drain, on the other side of that hill over there. It seemed designed to trap the Infected. They would slide in, and then they couldn’t climb back out again. We tried luring some, but the horde was dozens deep.”</p><p>Joel just listened.</p><p>“When we got to this church, we barricaded ourselves inside these doors, and then we went down to the basement,” said Noah, “but some more were in there with us. My mom rigged up a couple explosives that killed a few. A bunch of them followed us up the stairs though and we locked ourselves in the rotunda, but they were coming. When they came through the door, my dad and my Uncle Nick hit them repeatedly with Molotovs and that’s what started the fire. It went up really fast, because there were gasoline stores, up above us, in a kind of balcony. A stash that we didn’t notice right away. The rotunda blew. We had to run, so we did. All of us. But when me and my mom got outside, we looked back and we were alone. My dad and my Uncle Nick never made it out. I don’t know if they stayed behind to buy us time, or they got tripped up or crushed, or what. I mean, the ceiling was falling. My mom wanted to go back in but I stopped her. We hid in one of the outer buildings till night, but the fire was still burning, and nobody came out. There were more Infected in the woods. It was spreading. I drove us home.”</p><p>Before Joel could say anything then, Noah had begun to make his way up to the church doors. He felt along the hinges, and then he tried slamming one of the doors open with his shoulder. It budged, but it was clearly blocked. He took a step back and looked up as if to try and assess another way in.</p><p>“That's a lot of bad stuff,” said Joel. “But I can assure you, there ain’t nobody left inside.”</p><p>“No shit,” said Noah. He put the shotgun strap over his shoulder. “I wanna get in to find that gasoline stash.”</p><p>“You said it got blown up.”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Noah, “but maybe there’s like a clue or something, about whose it was.”</p><p>“I doubt anything is left behind, after what you described, and the looks of this place. This—I don’t think we should go in. It’s too dangerous.”</p><p>“When we came through these doors last time,” he said, “there was a big tarp, hung like a banner from the wall. It was the same letters as on those signs you see coming in.”</p><p>“<em>COTHS</em>?” said Joel.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Noah. “It said, <em>Welcome Home, COTHS.</em> Maybe if we can get in, there will be more information about what that means. Maybe something survived the fire.”</p><p>“Why do we need to know what that means?”</p><p>“Because maybe, if we can find them, they can tell us what’s been happening to the river.”</p><p>Joel took a deep breath. He ran his hand along the heavy door, which was singed along the outsides and on all the corners. The smell of burning was long gone, he thought, and replaced with the ambient smells of nature and you could hear birds and the cicadas rip-roaring through the trees. He dropped his hand to his side. “You wanna find out what’s been going on pretty bad, don't you?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Noah. “I need to know.”</p><p>Joel turned around, looking back out toward the road, where they’d left the truck. Readying himself for the consequences that most likely lie ahead of them, he said, “Why don’t we just follow the signs then?”</p><p>Noah was thinking on it. It was a warm day, and humid, and he had his sleeves cut off on his tee-shirt. His sunburn from the day before had turned into a very deep tan. He said, “Do you think it could be that simple?”</p><p>“Ain’t nothing that simple,” said Joel. “But it’s a start.”</p><p>“Then let’s go.”</p><p>“Hang on.” Joel clasped him on the shoulder. “You gotta know, Noah. I been down these kinds of roads before. It ain’t never easy.”</p><p>“What kind of roads?” said Noah.</p><p>“It’s been a lot of years, since the Outbreak,” said Joel. “Things changed. Rebel armies rose up, people gave up hope in a lot of places—It don’t look like the military has been through here in a very long time, but this here is a city, with enough people to cause problems. There is no telling what we are walking into.”</p><p>Noah was staring straight at him, but then he was looking down at his boots, seemed to be calculating something in his mind.</p><p>“Now I ain’t trying to deter you,” said Joel, “from finding out what went wrong here, because it destroyed your home. I said I'd help, and I will. I’m just warning you. And I’m saying, if we are gonna walk into a potential enemy territory, we need a plan.”</p><p>Noah nodded. He unzipped his backpack. He unfolded a map from the front pocket. It was a map of the University of Wisconsin, La Crosse. He showed it to Joel. “The travelers who came through,” he said, “the ones I mentioned yesterday at the trench, they gave this to my dad before we came up here. They had marked this building, where they said they saw some gnarly shit going down.”</p><p>“What kind of gnarly shit?” said Joel.</p><p>“They didn’t get into specifics,” said Noah. “Or, if they did, nobody told me. Maybe the signs lead here.”</p><p>Noah handed Joel the map, and Joel was trying to understand exactly what it was he was seeing. “Looks like the building you’re talking about is something called Centennial Hall.”</p><p>“Centennial Hall,” said Noah. "Good. Let's do it."</p><p>Joel studied the map, and then he studied Noah. He had not seen such fire inside a person, not in a long while. “Okay,” he said. He folded up the map, shoved it in his back pocket. “Let’s get a couple things straight first.”</p><p>“Fine,” said Noah.</p><p>“If we’re gonna do this,” said Joel, “I need you to listen to me. Okay? Take my lead, do exactly as I say. I understand that you seem know what you’re doing, and I trust you to hold your own, but trust me when I say that I got a lot more experience with navigating occupied urban areas than you do. Can we agree on that?”</p><p>Noah processed, and then he nodded sternly. “Okay,” he said.</p><p>“Good,” said Joel. He looked around, took a deep breath and ignored the nagging impulse to ponder his dumbass, impending mortality, yet again. “Let’s head back to the road,” he continued. “We’re gonna get in the truck, drive as close to the city as we can. Then we’ll go the rest of the way on foot.”</p><p> </p><p>Cici and Ellie had to take Cici’s truck that day, over the hill and to the Lapp's scrapyard, to get more fuel for the generator. To trade they had forty one-gallon bottles of fresh water in the bed of the truck, sourced from the Fox River to the east.</p><p>“So what’s the rest of the state like?” said Ellie. She had her arm hanging out the window, watching the trees fly by. They were on a shady dirt road that ran alongside the river. “Joel said he expected it to be flatter.”</p><p>“Wisconsin is very green,” she said. “And very flat. It is mostly forests and farmland, to be honest. But there are some bad places. Cities. Just like anywhere.”</p><p>“Like what cities?”</p><p>“Like Milwaukee,” she said. “Kenosha. Racine.”</p><p>“I've heard of Milwaukee," said Ellie. "Were there really no QZs in Wisconsin?"</p><p>“Not really,” said Cici. She had her blond hair tied back, loose, and pieces of it were falling into her face as she drove. “Those all used to be port towns in the old days, and then they were factory towns, before the Outbreak. I had only been to Milwaukee twice. My husband had some family there. It was big enough, and it should have had an actual QZ.”</p><p>“Why didn't it?” said Ellie.</p><p>“I don't know why. My dad used to say they didn't have the manpower, but some people said that the infection rates weren't high enough in Wisconsin yet to warrant it. All I know is FEDRA evacuated people from those areas down to the Chicago QZ,” she said. “When they got to the gates, though, the QZ was already too full. A lot were turned away and had nowhere to go.”</p><p>“Are you shitting me?”</p><p>“No,” said Cici. “It was messed up. I remember seeing it on the news, that they finally tried to outfit a small QZ in Milwaukee to house the overflow, but it was too late. A lot of those people got sick, or they armed up and resisted. The Fireflies—I hear you know about them?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Ellie. “I know about the Fireflies.”</p><p>“Well, they started giving them weapons, but it backfired. I think the military abandoned the area, including the Chicago QZ, maybe five or six years ago? The Milwaukee QZ never even got off the ground. It was totally shuttered." She looked down at her knuckles where she held onto the steering wheel. Ellie could tell that Cici was worked up about it, that maybe it had something to do with her husband. "You guys were right to try and avoid that part of the country. It’s bad.”</p><p>“Jesus,” said Ellie. “In Boston, we still had soldiers. I mean, I heard they were trying to leave? But the military was like, a basic part of life. It's basically what I was training for.”</p><p>“Did you feel safer?” said Cici. “Having soldiers around?”</p><p>Ellie watched her hand, resisting the wind as they drove down the dirt road. It was hot out. She wore a tee-shirt and had bandaged up her arm to hide the bite marks. “At first, I thought so. I thought, you’d have to be crazy to wanna kill soldiers. But when I was with Joel and Tess, trying to get out of the city, they were trying to kill us, and like, it was scary. I mean it didn’t help that they were constantly at war with the Fireflies either. Nobody could trust anybody else. I guess that’s why we left in the first place.”</p><p>“Joel and Tess?” said Cici. She looked at Ellie, away from the road.</p><p>“Oh,” said Ellie. “Yeah, Tess. I—wait. What the hell is that?”</p><p>Cici slammed on the breaks. There was a figure, a girl, coming toward them, walking right down the middle of the road. To Ellie, she looked like some kind of nun.</p><p>“Oh my god,” said Cici. She got out of the truck right away, left it on to idle. “Ellie, stay here.”</p><p>“Wait, what’s wrong?”</p><p>“Just stay here.”</p><p>Cici got out of the truck slowly. She had her hand on her side-arm. Ellie opened the door and stood up on the running board, to try and see what the hell was going to happen. As the girl got closer, Ellie could see now that there was blood on her hands and on her plain blue dress. She wore something like a little white bonnet over her mussed hair. She was not a nun. She had to be one of the Amish.</p><p>As Cici approached, she held out one hand, as if coaxing a small animal. “Danielle?” she said. “Danielle, are you okay?”</p><p>The girl stopped when she saw Cici and looked like she’d been crying. Her hands were bloody, she was getting blood on her face and in her dirty blond hair. Ellie could barely make out what they were saying, but she could catch a little.</p><p>“Are you bitten?” said Cici. She held the girl by the shoulder, to steady her.</p><p>“No,” said the girl. “I don’t—I don’t think so.”</p><p>“What happened?”</p><p>“I was just in the barn.”</p><p>“Who’s blood is this?”</p><p>She said nothing.</p><p>“What happened?”</p><p>“I was in the barn,” she said. “Gathering eggs. One of them was in there. It is locked inside. I was coming to find you and Noah.”</p><p>“Where are Zach, and your dad? Where’s Becky?”</p><p>“Zach and my dad are out hunting,” she said. “They’ll be back tomorrow. Becky is at the house. She fell asleep on the day bed. She is safe.”</p><p>“Come with us,” said Cici. “I’ll drive you home.”</p><p>“I—Thank you. Who is she?” said the girl—Danielle. She had a slight accent, Ellie thought, but there was no way to know what it was. She was staring and pointing at Ellie. She had to be at least Ellie’s age, maybe a little older. </p><p>“That’s Ellie,” said Cici. “She’s a friend. Come on.”           </p><p>They drove silently, about another mile or so, up a hill. Ellie stared outside at the grass. You could see a very long, green lawn with many tall trees now, including a weeping willow, and nested behind them a white house, which was very simple, with gray shutters and a pair of wooden rocking chairs on the porch. Danielle, the Amish girl, stared down at her hands the entire ride. They were bloodied, and this seemed to really disturb her. Ellie could tell. She sat in between Ellie and Cici on the bench in the cab of the truck.</p><p>“I’m Ellie,” said Ellie, awkwardly. Even though she had already been introduced, she felt like she needed to fill the silence with something. She was trying to play it cool, but she didn’t hold out her hand, because she didn’t really know the rules.</p><p>Danielle smiled at her, demurely. “It’s nice to meet you, Ellie. I’m Danielle. I’m sorry about this.” </p><p>“Pretty freaky, huh?” said Ellie. “I’ve had those things sneak up on me before, too. It’s not fun.”</p><p>A little surprised, Danielle had very bright blue eyes, like swimming pools. “No, it is not fun at all,” she said. “I had to push it away. This is…this is its blood. Not mine. It did not bite me, or get is nails in me. I don’t know why it was bleeding, from its face and neck and shirt. I don’t understand. They are so sick, the Infected. It’s so sad.”</p><p>Ellie thought this was a strange point of view, but she listened. “Have you guys, uh, been getting a lot of them, too? Wandering on your property?”</p><p>“More lately,” said Danielle. She was scrubbing her hands with her skirt now, trying to get the blood out the crevices. “Cici, we heard explosions again yesterday. Is everything all right?”</p><p>“Not really,” said Cici. “But we’re okay. Ellie and I were just driving over to the scrapyard for fuel. We need to keep the electric fence running.”</p><p>“Is Noah home?”</p><p>“No,” said Cici. “He’s on a supply run.”</p><p>Danielle nodded. She turned to Ellie then. She had a wide, warm face, like the sun, and a soft voice. She said, “Are you new on the farm?”</p><p>“Me?” said Ellie. “Uh, yes.”</p><p>“How did you find this place?”</p><p>“My friend and me—his name is Joel—we got lost, coming out of Chicago. We ended up here. He’s actually with Noah now. Helping, get the supplies.”</p><p>“You must have gotten very lost if you found yourselves here.”</p><p>“That’s what they tell me,” said Ellie.</p><p>“I see,” said Danielle. “Cici, did you tell them not to drink the water?”</p><p>“We did,” said Cici.</p><p>“Good.”</p><p>They arrived at a large wooden fence with a tall white gate, and they parked. Around the back of the house, as they had come around the bend, you could see a flower garden, and a clothesline, as well as a wooden swing set, and a tire swing, hanging from an old oak tree. You could not see any scrapyard. But you could see the red barn with the doors chained shut. There were also several acres of corn. The property was empty out front, but if you looked closely upon parking on the drive, you could see fine barbed wire, laid down like a grid across huge swaths of the lawn. It was sneaky and unexpected, and it scared the shit out of Ellie, because she had legitimately not seen it there at first.</p><p>“Holy shit,” said Ellie. “What’s this for? More traps?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Danielle, as she got down from the truck. “Cici and Noah laid it for us earlier this year.”</p><p>“That’s crazy. You ever catch anything in all that?”</p><p>“You’re funny,” said Danielle. When she laughed, she sounded like a mouse. Ellie did not feel funny, but it was nice to hear her laugh. “Please come inside, just for a moment. while I clean up. Then I’ll show you where I locked it.”</p><p>The inside of the house was plain but, Ellie thought, lovely. All of the furniture was simple and sturdy, carved from wood, and there was a basin but no faucet, a propane stove, and all of the light fixtures were oil-burning. Ellie saw what she was pretty sure was a loom, and many quilts with beautifully bold geometric patterns. They looked similar to the quilts on her and Joel’s beds back at the farmhouse, and Ellie wondered if this might be where they’d come from. In the kitchen, there was a bowl full of brown eggs and a pie cooling on the windowsill. The house was warm and a little stuffy, and the floors creaked beneath their footsteps. Danielle took off her bonnet and set it on the kitchen table beside a terra cotta pot of purple flowers. Danielle scrubbed her hands in the basin, and then her face, until the blood was gone. She was sure to check her arms and hands for bite marks, though she swore she was not bitten, and there was nothing. She was clean, just a little worse for the ware.</p><p>“Becky should be here somewhere,” said Danielle. “Becky?” She called out, but the house felt empty. “Where could she be.”</p><p>“What kinds of flowers are these?” said Ellie about the pot on the table.</p><p>“They’re wood violets.”</p><p>“They smell really good.”</p><p>Danielle smiled. She looked around again, standing plainly in the kitchen with her hands folded in front of her. She said, “Becky?”</p><p>“I will take care of the Infected in the barn,” said Cici. She had not really left the doorway. She didn’t seem uncomfortable, but Ellie could tell that she had not spent much time inside the house, despite having known the Lapps for many years. “Ellie, why don’t you come along.”</p><p>“Okay,” said Ellie.</p><p>“Becky?”</p><p>“Is everything okay?” said Cici.</p><p>“I’m not sure,” said Danielle. “Becky was asleep right here, on the day bed, by the window.”</p><p>“Is Becky your sister?” said Ellie.</p><p>“Yes,” said Danielle. “She is my brother Zachary’s wife. She is pregnant, so she sleeps often.”</p><p>“How long has she known?” said Cici.</p><p>“A few months.”</p><p>“That's a blessing. Best wishes to you all.”</p><p>“Thank you.”</p><p>“Could she be upstairs?” said Ellie. “I thought I heard something, just now.”</p><p>“She must be. Becky?”</p><p> </p><p>Joel and Noah drove until they hit what looked to be the town. They parked at an O’Reilly’s Auto Parts, hauled their backpacks onto their backs, and loaded their guns. The signs continued, most of them nailed to other kinds of signs: <em>COTHS,</em> they read<em>. C.O.T.H.S. </em></p><p>
  <em>C O T H S.</em>
</p><p>La Crosse had never been a big city. Joel didn’t know a lot, but he could gather as much. It wasn’t big, but it was a college town, and that college was big enough to have a football team. It would have been home to a lot of people during the initial Outbreak, probably forty or fifty thousand, and it was probably a metro-hub for these little Driftless, farming towns, too, with a good hospital, warehouses, factories, and some semblance of a retail industry. It would have been a lot of meth, he thought. Maybe not so much in the city proper, but in the outskirts, in the tin cans and the trailer parks. As a city on the banks of the Mississippi, it would have pretty pockets but mostly, it was just franchises and mini-malls, like anything else.</p><p>But this was strange, thought Joel. The goddam of it was, it seemed empty. Really empty. Like, god no longer smiled upon this place, as if something evil had given up on this place, gone on its way. There was nothing. Nothing bad, nothing good. Just the trees, and the nature noises, the grasses, which had grown so tall, they engulfed the cars abandoned at the side of the road. There was a McDonalds sign, growing out of a massive, twisted heap of vines and bramble and it made Joel think of small things that still broke his heart from childhood. He pushed it down.</p><p>“This is fucking weird,” said Noah. The air smelled ripe in some places. Rotten. Like an overgrowth of mold in the washing machine. “What the fuck is that smell?”</p><p>“Something bad happened here,” said Joel.</p><p>“Hey, look,” said Noah. He was headed toward another one of the signs. It said:<em> COTHS. </em>      </p><p>“Yep, another sign,” said Joel.</p><p>“No, look,” said Noah. He got closer. He had to snap a couple saplings to get to it. This sign was on the ground, leaning against a tree. He pushed back the tall grass, and the milkweed to reveal the rest.</p><p>Joel squinted at the words, more paintings of flowers. “<em>Circle of the Holy Signal,</em>” he read, <em>“Welcome all ye who seek submission in its eyes.</em>”</p><p>“<em>Circle of the Holy Signal,</em>" said Noah. "<em>COTHS. </em>Sounds like a religion or something. Is that good?"</p><p>Joel looked around, listening to the cicadas. There were zero recent signs of human life. “Not always," said Joel, suddenly feeling watched, or left behind. "Let's get a move on."</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>I just wanted to say thank you for reading ^_^ I hope you like the story so far. -gala</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0007"><h2>7. Interlude I (Storm)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <strong>On the stereo:</strong>
</p><p>"Calling Cards" by Neko Case (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ektnKdLpxaQ">youtube</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4rKTK1ZiE7Hrk0U6pUnHvc?si=u3TpoxDyRZO5_A1Z3U2bNw">spotify</a>)<br/>"Magpie to the Morning" by Neko Case (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VouFRoUzEqQ">youtube</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/0XCscko5bYZYYWZrM5BIXM?si=OflpbTG9TQqUZ6BPTCR_gg">spotify</a>)<br/>"Storms" by Fleetwood Mac (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ta4wChZ8q7Y">youtube</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/3h9T2wLTy4FEKulLDkUjlX?si=URnk_HJXRsOEqtEizQnXRg">spotify</a>)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Just admit you love it,” said Ellie. “Don’t be a bitch.”</p><p>She and Noah were in the back house as the rain pounded down on the roof. Neko Case was playing. In the past two weeks since arriving in Jackson, they had rigged up the stereo but not the space heaters. It was still the dog days of summer. Noah would just light a fire in the stove at night, because it was faster. And if it got too cold, they could just go to the main house and crash on the living room floor anyway.</p><p>“I will not deny that this is good shit,” said Noah. They were talking about the music, on the stereo. “You can count on me.”</p><p>“I love this music,” said Ellie. <em>Every dial tone, every truck stop, every heartbreak, I love you more. </em>“It’s pure.” She flopped back onto the bed and closed her eyes. “It sounds like water. I wonder if Joel knows about Neko.”</p><p>“Probably,” said Noah. He was on the floor, sawing two-by-fours. He wanted to make an end table. It had been a while since he’d done any sort of carpentry. “He knows a lot of weird shit about music.”</p><p>“Does Cici know Neko?”</p><p>“Maybe? Though we didn’t have any of this back at the house.”</p><p>Ellie stared up at the ceiling. They had stuck a bunch of glow-in-the-dark stars up there, loot from the Wal-mart back in Nebraska. Elsewhere on the walls there were posters and drawings by Ellie and maps that Noah had collected from their various stops, all along the I-80.</p><p>“Do you think this place will last?” said Ellie. “Jackson. Do you think it’s legit?”</p><p>“I hope so,” said Noah.</p><p>There was a knock on the door then. Ellie sat up straight, had switched her knife open just to look at it. “Who is it?” she said.</p><p>“It’s Dina. From the bonfire?”</p><p>Dina was a surprise. Ellie swung her feet around, over the side of the bed, electrocuted, and failed to speak.</p><p>“Hang on,” said Noah. He got up, set the saw on the kitchen table, which was stacked mostly with books. He opened the door, and there was Dina, standing like a picture, hands shoved in her pockets in her green hoodie.</p><p>“Hey,” she said. “You’re Noah, right?”</p><p>“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “And you’re Dina.”</p><p>“Is Ellie here?”</p><p>“Yup. Come on in.”</p><p>Dina stepped inside, shook off the rain. Meanwhile, Ellie was just standing there with her knife still out, like she was going to stab someone. “Hey,” she said.</p><p>“You okay?” said Dina.         </p><p>“What?” said Ellie. She looked down at the blade, blushing awkwardly, then she put it away into her pocket. “Oh, yeah. I’m fine. What’s going on?”</p><p>“I just came because Maria got a call on the radio,” said Dina. Her hair was tied back tightly off her face. “Joel and Tommy are stuck at one of the lookouts over in town, because of the storm. They’re fine, but they’ll probably be gone till morning. She wanted me to let you know.”</p><p>“Why didn’t she just come herself?” said Ellie.</p><p>“Oh,” said Dina. “Well, I was there. I offered.”</p><p>“I should go tell my mom,” said Noah.</p><p>“Why don’t you just call her?” said Ellie. “On the walkie.”</p><p>“I could,” said Noah. He put on his sneakers. His hair was getting longer. Kind of floppy behind his ears. “But with it storming like this, she’s probably already worried.”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Ellie. “Nevermind. You’re right.”</p><p>“I’ll be back,” he said.</p><p>“See ya,” said Dina.</p><p>Once he was gone, Ellie and Dina stood in the room, just looking at each other. The thunder went off in the distance, bellowing somewhere over the mountain, low and mean. But it was just a storm, thought Ellie. Just a storm.</p><p>“So, how’s it going?” said Dina, eventually. She had her hands behind her back.</p><p>“Pretty good,” said Ellie. “How’s it going with you?”</p><p>“Not bad. Do you remember me, or…?”</p><p>“Of course,” said Ellie. She went over to the makeshift kitchen. There were some cokes in the cooler that she and Noah had salvaged a few days before. “You want one?”</p><p>“Hell yeah,” said Dina.</p><p>They opened their cokes and drank them sitting in bean bag chairs, listening to the music and the rain for a while. The soda was sort of flat, but they didn’t care. It tasted delicious. “This music is good,” said Dina. “It’s pretty, kind of country. What is it?”</p><p>“It’s this lady, named Neko Case,” said Ellie. She was wearing an old shirt, blue, with a surfer on the front and the words <em>Cowabunga, dude.</em> “I just discovered her actually. She’s really awesome. I think this album came out like, a week or so before the shit hit the fan in 2013?”</p><p>“Seriously?” said Dina.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Ellie. “Me and Noah have actually been scavenging all the best albums from that year, from like music stores and stuff. We’re trying to get as complete of a collection as possible.”</p><p>“That’s so neat,” said Dina. She held her coke with both hands, looking down at her thumbs. “You’re like really cool historians.”</p><p>“Sort of,” said Ellie. “But that’s being generous.”</p><p>They sipped.</p><p>“So, tell me something,” said Dina after a little while. Her voice changed, like she had gained confidence all of a sudden. “What’s the deal with you guys. Is Noah your real brother who you magically found after ten years of separation, or is that just a rumor?”</p><p>“It’s a rumor,” said Ellie. “Noah is just…we’re not related.”</p><p>“Well you guys seem like siblings.”</p><p>“We’ve been through a lot,” said Ellie. “Maybe that’s what people are sensing.”</p><p>“There’s definitely a bond there.”</p><p>“I don’t have any real siblings, that I know of at least,” said Ellie. “Do you?”</p><p>“Not anymore,” said Dina. Her eyes were very brown, like little mud puddles. Dina was an open book.</p><p>Noah came in the door then, loudly, and soaking wet. He was like a giant dog sometimes, stomping through the house. “Jesus Christ,” he said. “It is fucking pouring.”</p><p>“Yeah, we know,” said Dina.</p><p>“I’m gonna head out,” said Noah. He started rummaging through the bureau by the door, tugged a gray hoodie over his head, and then he yanked the drawstrings until the hood closed almost totally around his face so you could only see his nose. He looked like a too-tall alien. It was funny.</p><p>“Head out where?” said Ellie.</p><p>“To Jesse’s,” he said, loosening the hood. “You guys wanna come?”</p><p>“What about Cici?” said Ellie.</p><p>“She’s already on her way,” said Noah. “She was getting ready to leave when I went over there.”</p><p>Dina was looking down into her can again, as if it were full of secrets.</p><p>Ellie said, “Dina, you wanna go?”</p><p>The rain kicked up outside. It seemed like it wouldn’t let up for hours. Dina drank the last of her coke and set the empty can down on the floor. She stood quickly and smoothed out the wrinkles in her shirt. “Sure,” she said. “Let’s do it.”</p><p>“Sweet,” said Noah.</p><p> </p><p>“So you just went on up there, to La Crosse, with the boy,” said Tommy, feet crossed up on the coffee table. They were getting old and half-high from the cigarettes. “No questions asked.”</p><p>“No questions asked,” said Joel, finishing his cigarette. “It wasn’t like back in Boston.”</p><p>“What changed?”</p><p>“Noah kind of—he reminded me, of me. He needed to convince himself of something, maybe it was just to do with figuring out what was happening to his town, maybe it was a test. I don’t know. But he’s a good kid, and I didn’t want him going down the wrong path.”</p><p>“And Cici, what was her deal, back then?”</p><p>Joel leaned back in the chair, sinking. It was in tatters and the bottom was practically falling out. He said, “To be quite honest, she was a complete mystery to me. Still is."</p><p>"Ain't they all."</p><p>"Noah's much more forthcoming," said Joel. "Maybe too forthcoming, I don't know. Maybe it's a good thing, because he gets Ellie talking, even when she don't want to. Cici and me, we got along fine in the beginning, but it was like anything in a situation like that. It took us a while to become friends.”      </p><p>Tommy started laughing. “Guess it must be hard for you, big brother. Meeting your match like that.”</p><p>Joel just ashed his cigarette on the table as the storm raged outside.</p><p>“Well, I am glad you came back,” said Tommy, quiet. “To Jackson. When you all came through the first time, I really didn't know. I didn't know if we'd see you again. But we really needed you guys. And it’s good to—well, it’s just good to be together again, ain’t it?”</p><p>Joel took a drag, looking down at his knuckles. “This is a nice place you’ve built here, little brother. I'm sorry if it ever seemed like I doubted you. You and Maria have done good work.”</p><p>“Thanks,” said Tommy, placing his boots back on the ground. “Now, tell me what the hell happened next. Who the hell were these <em>Circle of the Holy Signal</em> motherfuckers? And what the hell did Cici say happened back at the farm—with the Amish girl?”</p><p>Joel smiled to himself as if recalling a joke out of the blue. “Brace yourself,” he said.</p><p> </p><p>At Jesse’s, Cici sat alone on the covered back porch, looking up into the storm. She had a glass of whiskey, locally distilled in a barrel on the other side of the compound. Jackson made her think of home, filling her with unwanted memories, and a mild anxiety. Jesse’s parents had a dog named Cinderella. She was a black Schipperke mix, little and spry. She came along and licked Cici's hand where she sat, looking up at her expectantly, all wet from the rain.</p><p>“You want to be inside, don’t you?” said Cici. She smiled and patted the dog behind the ears. The little dog had brought her back down to earth, out of the raging sky. “Me, too. Let’s ditch this weather.”</p><p>Back in the house, the kids were in the living room, drinking soda and exchanging stories of the past. Noah and Ellie had arrived. They were sitting on the couch and waved when she came in. He had his arm slung around Ellie. She shared little of her life with the group, as usual, thought Cici, but she was always responsive and encouraging of others to share their lives with her. Dina was telling a story about New Mexico. Jesse watched her closely while leaning against the fireplace. There was music on the stereo, Fleetwood Mac. </p><p>Robin, Jesse’s mother, came along with a plate of chicken wings. “You want some?” she said.</p><p>“I'm good,” said Cici. </p><p>Robin took the plate out to the living room instead, set it on the coffee table where it would be devoured. Robin was a really nice woman and an excellent cook. She had always made Cici feel welcome. She pioneered most of the potlucks in town, and Jesse and Noah were becoming friends. That night, she had her hair down. She wore a hooded sweatshirt. She was a few years older than Cici, but that was inconsequential. “Where’s Joel?” she said.</p><p>“Him and Tommy got stuck at the lookout,” said Cici, sipping her whiskey. “Maria said they radio'd in. They’ll be back in the morning.”</p><p>"You worried?"</p><p>Cici shrugged. "I'm trying not to be. Maria said everything was all clear. It's just the storm."</p><p>Robin seemed to understand this. “Jonathan is working in his greenhouse,” she said. “Guess it’s just the the women and children tonight.”</p><p>“What’s he up to?”</p><p>“They want to expand the soy crop,” said Robin. “They need to build more space. With summer running out on us, there’s a crunch.”</p><p>Cici had helped out some, with the farming. Though she was not as familiar with greenhouses. “Are storms common in the mountains, in late summer?”</p><p>“Yes,” she said. “What about in the midwest?”</p><p>“Very much,” said Cici. “The changing of the seasons bring chaos everywhere.”</p><p>“I hear that.” Robin’s laugh was deep. It was reassuring. “Jesse likes this group,” she said, looking at the kids in the living room, sniping at one another and eating chicken. “He fits in with them. I like them, too. They’re rascals, all of them.”</p><p>“It’s good,” said Cici, “to see Noah, like this. With other teenagers. Just hanging out. For a long time, I was worried he would never have the chance."</p><p>“What about Joel?” said Robin. “How is he with Joel?”</p><p>Cici was staring at Noah. He had gotten taller, again. Just in that past year. She thought he might keep on growing forever, like one of those Giant Redwoods she had read about in childhood, the ones that lived way out in California. “He’s actually good,” she said. “He's always liked Joel. Joel was there for Noah, early on."</p><p>“That’s good.” Robin leaned past Cici to pick up a bottle of beer from the counter. She popped off the top and said, “Cheers. I’m glad you came tonight.”</p><p>“Me, too,” said Cici. They drank.</p><p>“Are you guys going to the softball game tomorrow?” said Robin.</p><p>“As long as the rain stays away, probably. Ellie mentioned something about making tee-shirts. She's pretty enthusiastic.”</p><p>Robin thought it was unironically a good idea. "I can help," she said.</p><p>Then the lights flickered, again, and then again. The rain was still heavy on the roof, and a hush fell over the room. Everybody looked around as if waiting for something to happen. Jesse paused the music and straightened up off the mantle. Noah was up, looking out the window. Ellie and Dina were looking at each other, as if making calculations in one another’s eyes about what to do next.</p><p>“It’s just the storm,” said Robin, as the tension died down. Jesse turned the music back on, and the talking resumed. “They are used to the worst case scenario. But you remember, don’t you, Cici? A time when a storm was just a storm.”</p><p>Cici watched Noah and Ellie. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it looked like he’d made some sort of stupid joke, and she was rumpling his hair, and they were laughing on the couch beneath the faint, white glow of the Christmas lights. They reminded her of puppies. When she was eighteen and pregnant, sitting on a river bank in Viroqua, WI, what had she imagined her life would become? Joel had said the same thing once, in a manner of speaking. <em>When I was eighteen, I had a GED and two jobs, </em>he’d said. <em>Three, if you counted Sarah. </em>She tried not thinking about him when he wasn't there.</p><p>There was a knock on the door then. It was Maria. At first, Cici was worried. But that was just the storm talking. Maria had a bottle of wine and a bowl of potato chips. Her hair was down, and she looked tired but pretty.</p><p>“Took you long enough,” said Robin.</p><p>“No rest for the wicked,” said Maria.</p><p>When Maria came into the kitchen, all the kids shouted HEY MARIA as raucously as possible, and everybody laughed and asked for her to hand over the chips. Maria was a stern woman but even she could not resist them.</p><p> </p><p>Outside, later on, Ellie and Noah were sitting out on the porch. Noah was scratching Cinderella the dog behind the ears while Ellie sat with her knees pulled up to her chest, staring hard into the dark as if parsing its atoms, which screamed.</p><p>“So," said Noah. “What's going on with Dina?"</p><p>Dina was still inside the house with Jesse. They had gravitated toward one another as the night drew on.</p><p>“Nothing,” said Ellie, sighing. “I don’t know. Does it seem like something's going on?"</p><p>“She's nice,” he said. “You could tell me."</p><p>“I hardly know her,” said Ellie.</p><p>“That doesn’t always matter.”</p><p>“She likes Jesse anyway,” said Ellie. “I’m just some girl. I don’t fit.”</p><p>“Fit where?” said Noah.</p><p>Ellie laughed at this and shoved him in the shoulder. “Shut up.”</p><p>“I’m serious,” said Noah. “Where are you trying to fit?”</p><p>“I don’t know, Noah.”</p><p>“Is this a Riley thing?” he said. </p><p>“Please,” she said.</p><p>“Fine,” he said. Ellie was not an open book. “Well, I’ll still be your friend.”</p><p>“Oh, ha ha,” said Ellie, shoving him again, harder this time. He almost tipped in his chair, but that was on purpose. “Like you could unfriend me. You need me.”</p><p>He thought back to Moline, when they had found that arcade. It had been raining that night, too. He remembered the blood, gathering and running down the drain pipes, as if that's what they were meant for. “Let’s go inside before this storm gets the best of us,” he said.</p>
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<a name="section0008"><h2>8. La Crosse (Pt. 2) / The Lapp Farm (Pt. 2)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
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    <em>"Jury's still out. But, man. You can't deny that view."</em>
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          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>cw: canon-typical violence, blood</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>As Joel and Noah worked their way through the city, nothing much changed, at first. The buildings were empty. Many were boarded up, but not all of them. Little streams and creeks seemed to have broken through the bluffs, coming in off the La Crosse River and now flowed in skinny little ribbons in the empty lots and fields. Looking upon them was paradoxical, for the water was enticing in its visual clarity, but both Joel and Noah knew the truth. There was not much wildlife, and this brought into the world a worrisome quiet beyond the sound of the wind in the trees. The sun came down even still and brought color to the parking lots, all of them overgrown with tall grasses and ponds. The cordyceps in the water did not seem to affect the flora. It was a pretty place, Joel thought, despite its indifference toward human life.</p><p>As they crossed the city, Joel could tell they were getting closer to pure, raw nature, as the greenery thickened, and the buildings and houses became increasingly sunken by floods and overtaken by trees and their massive root systems. He knew from the map that the campus was more or less nestled within a great many bluffs, which rose up like grassy table tops, and the Mississippi was less than two miles to the west. Little purple flowers grew everywhere, and they started seeing mushrooms, too, growing on some of the blackened moldy walls of fallen structures, and so Joel and Noah did not get too close.</p><p>They just kept following the signs for the Circle of the Holy Signal, and headed straight toward Centennial Hall at the central campus. At times, Joel thought that perhaps he was being watched, through the windows in the residential neighborhoods, but this was hard to put his finger on. Even in the natural wreckage, there were so many houses, small and intact, lined up in rows across many blocks, that he consistently found himself wondering what could be inside. They found a German Shepherd recently dead by what appeared to be a gunshot wound, lying by the side of the road near a middle school. While they had been crouched low, trying to determine exactly how long ago it had been killed, another dog came up with its tail wagging. This one was some sort of lab mix, and it looked lost and starving as it sniffed at their hands excitedly. Joel scrubbed it behind the ears once and then reluctantly bid it to flee. They had nothing for it. This was a sad and desolate place.</p><p>After they had walked more than two miles, they started to see actual signs of the campus, which was promising as well as foreboding. School flags that had survived, still flapping off the street lights, and crimson banners for the football team. There were take-out restaurants and bars with their windows bashed in, some of them still advertising discounts for students as well as a UW Credit Union. They walked down Main Street for a while, passing many Lutheran churches, sometimes more than one on a single block. Some of the churches had been co-opted and hung with banners that read <em>Worship Circle, </em>another tell of their mystery cult<em>. </em>Those churches in particular were so overgrown with the mushroom, they looked like beautiful death flowers, and Joel bid them to put on their gas masks just for the time being, as he was worried about spore levels, even in the open air.</p><p>At some point, they came upon a school store. It still had mannequins in the window and the doors were locked up with a heavy chain. Joel stopped to look around and Noah leaned against a stop sign to drink some water.</p><p>“What’s your take on this place?” he said eventually. "Do you have any like, feelings about it?"</p><p>Joel was examining the chain around the door handles. “My take is, this might be a fool’s errand.” He had a small screwdriver and lock pick, given to him by Bill back in Lincoln. “But I have been known to make my fair share of foolish decisions over the years. Anyway, this town seems fairly dead.”</p><p>“We can go back,” said Noah. He was holding the water bottle, soaked in sweat from his dark hair to his red Converse. “We saw the church. Maybe there’s nothing else to see. Maybe it’s too dangerous.” He had a kicked look about him, like a puppy. Joel saw him for his age then—old enough to know a lot, but still too young to know much better. He had a lot of confidence and sometimes this could make him seem older, but he was still only seventeen. </p><p>“What do you wanna do?” said Joel. He popped the lock on the chain with considerable ingenuity. He was a little proud of himself. "I'm here to help you."</p><p>“I wanna keep going,” said Noah. “I wanna know what’s going on.”</p><p>“All right then,” said Joel. “Let’s get to Centennial Hall and see what we can find.”</p><p>“Okay,” said Noah, like he had been reenergized. “What are you doing?”</p><p>“I’m going inside,” said Joel, loosening the chain and letting it drop. It made a loud noise and he then used a piece of rebar to pry open the doors. </p><p>“Why?” said Noah.</p><p>“Because,” said Joel, letting the rebar clank to the concrete sidewalk. He wiped the sweat from his face and his beard. “There might be something in here I want.”</p><p>They went inside. It was surprisingly maintained. It even looked defended, as if somebody had taken up shop in there many years before. There were makeshift blockades in the front of the store and what looked to be a sizable nest in the employee’s lounge. From the looks of the posters on the wall, he guessed it had been college kids.</p><p>“It’s just paraphernalia, for the college,” said Noah. He was going through the aisles, looking at the clothes on the racks, the mugs and water bottles. “What would you want in here.”</p><p>“A souvenir,” said Joel. He went over to the women’s section. A huge piece of particle board had fallen from the ceiling. He hauled it away.</p><p>“For yourself?”</p><p>“No,” said Joel.</p><p>“For Ellie?”</p><p>Joel was scouring a rack of hooded sweatshirts. “She asked me to bring her something, as a trade-in for not letting her come along. Hey, does this look like her size?” He held one of them up, a faded crimson with the words UW - LA CROSSE stamped on front, in a sort of vintage font. He thought it seemed like something she'd wear.</p><p>“What size is it?” said Noah.</p><p>“Uh, a woman’s extra small.”</p><p>“Well, she’s pretty extra small. So, I’d say that’s a good bet.”</p><p>Joel gave him a look. “Come here,” he said. “Put this in your backpack.”</p><p>“What?” said Noah. “No. You put it in yours.”</p><p>“I don’t have room in mine. Your mom packed it with one too many bomb parts and radio frequency enhancement mumbo jumbo, and it’s already digging in my spine.”</p><p>“Fine,” said Noah, swiping the sweatshirt. He rolled it up tightly and shoved it in the front pocket. “For Ellie.” Then he zipped it shut and they looked around. He saw something funny, one gray tee-shirt folded neatly in a disorderly stack. He held it up and showed it to Joel. “What about this one, for you?”</p><p>It said: <em>UW - La Crosse Dad.</em></p><p>Joel said, “Yeah, that’s real funny.”</p><p>“I thought so.”</p><p>They were alarmed then, by a loud and inhuman screech, some banging on the walls coming from a locked back room. </p><p>“Jesus,” said Joel, picking up his shotgun. Whatever it was, it was angry, but it was trapped. He thought it might have been one of the college kids who'd made a nest here, which saddened him.</p><p>“That’s the first one,” said Noah. “In the whole town. What does that mean?”</p><p>“It means we’re getting closer to the epicenter of whatever the hell is going on here,” said Joel. “We should keep moving.”</p><p>They left the store, left the infected to rot. It was blistering now in the high noon sun as they continued their journey. “What was that thing in the store, do you know?" said Noah, earnest. He had his shotgun in his hands, a heavy pistol stuffed in the back of his jeans. He had killed plenty of Infected in his life, but it was mostly runners.</p><p>“Sounded like a clicker,” said Joel. "Based on the looks of things around here, that is most likely what we'll be running into. Whatever happened, it’s been years.”</p><p>“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Noah. It was a common sentiment for him, but now, something had changed in his demeanor. He seemed desperate.</p><p>“What now."</p><p>“We lived for so long, on our farm,” said Noah. “It felt safe, growing up there, barely encountering any of this insane bullshit, until just this past year or so. But these people here, in the city, it looks like they went through something horrible, for such a long time. How can that be? How can they all be dead?”</p><p>“If I remember properly,” said Joel, “it took the cordyceps some months to take root in the midwest. Once they isolated the big cities, it was a slow trickle to the end, and smaller cities like this, once they got it, there wasn’t much support. They got it bad. Local militias rose up in their various…forms. I ain’t surprised you all managed to survive on your land for as long as you did, given how isolated you are, but I suppose that it was only a matter of time before it got to you, too, one way or another.”</p><p>“This is so sad,” said Noah as they looked around at their desolate surroundings. He was shaking his head over and over again like he could not believe it. “My mom was born in La Crosse. Her ancestors came here from Norway in like the 1890s. Look at it now.”</p><p>“What about your dad?”</p><p>“My dad was born in Madison,” he said. “His grandparents were Spanish immigrants.”</p><p>“Was his family farmers, too?”</p><p>"Yeah,” said Noah. They were walking along, kicking around in the middle of the road, all cracked up with weeds, listening to the wind. “What about you?”</p><p>“What about me?”</p><p>“You’re from Texas,” he said. “What about your parents?”</p><p>“My parents were also from Texas,” said Joel. “My grandparents, too.”</p><p>“Where in Texas?”</p><p>“A town called Odessa.”</p><p>“Have you ever been married?” said Noah.</p><p>Joel was looking up at the sky now. There were some carrion birds up there, circling. A bad omen. “What?” he said.</p><p>“I asked if you’ve ever been married.”</p><p>“Why would you wanna know that?”</p><p>“I’m just curious,” said Noah.</p><p>Joel sighed and gave in. “Yes, I have been married.”</p><p>“When?”</p><p>“A long time ago.”</p><p>“What happened?” said Noah.</p><p>“It didn’t work out.”</p><p>“I see,” said Noah, sensing his unease. “What’s your last name?”</p><p>“My last name?” said Joel.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Noah, innocent. But then he also noticed the birds. Their conversation dropped off a cliff. “Holy shit,” he said. “You see that?”</p><p>“Yeah, I do.”</p><p>“Those are turkey vultures.” He was chewing on a stick, something he’d picked up off the ground. “They nest all over these bluffs.”</p><p>“Yeah, well,” said Joel. “Looks like they found something. Come on.”</p><p>           </p><p>Meanwhile, at the Lapp farmhouse, Ellie had wandered over to the bottom of the stairs. They were heavy and a dark wood. Everything about the house seemed really sturdy, but it also seemed really old. Things creaked and there were occasional dips in the flooring. “I think she’s upstairs,” she said. She thought she’d heard movement now from the floor above. But she wouldn’t call out Becky’s name, because it seemed like it might not be her place. She was a stranger here.</p><p>“Becky?” said Danielle.</p><p>"Hang on,” said Cici from the living room. She had redone her pony tail. It was high on her head now and twisted into a bun. “Looks like somebody’s coming to the backdoor.”</p><p>“What?” said Danielle. "Who?"</p><p>Concerned, Ellie came back into the kitchen space and placed her hand on the loom. Maybe she hadn’t heard anything after all. She glanced toward the stairs and then back to the door. There was a little window in the door, the shape of a semi-circle, and now a girl rushing up the steps, wearing a white dress and a little white kapp. She tried to get in, but the door was locked. She knocked several times, with urgency.</p><p>“Danielle?” said the girl. “Danielle, are you here?”</p><p>“Hey, is that Becky?” said Ellie.</p><p>“Becky,” said Danielle.</p><p>She went to the door, opened it quickly. Becky came inside, her small, pink hands on the slope of her pregnant belly. Her hair was very orange, almost striking. When she looked around and Saw Cici, then Ellie, she became alarmed. “Cici?” she said. “What’s going on?”</p><p>“Everything’s okay,” said Danielle. “Where’d you go?”</p><p>“I woke up, and you were gone. I went outside. I looked everywhere.”</p><p>“I found one of the sick in the barn,” said Danielle. She helped Becky to the kitchen table, where the two of them sat down. Becky seemed out of breath. “I went to find Cici and Noah to help.”</p><p>“Oh,” she said, relieved. “Goodness. I was so worried.”</p><p>“I’m gonna take care of the runner in the barn,” said Cici.</p><p>“Runner?” said Becky.</p><p>“She means the sick,” said Danielle.</p><p>“Oh,” said Becky. “Right. Cici, how is Noah? It has been a long time since I last saw you.”</p><p>“Noah’s doing just fine,” said Cici. “Congratulations, by the way. On your blessing.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Becky, re-situating in the chair. “Thank you. We are so grateful.”</p><p>“This is Ellie,” said Danielle. She came over from the table and held Ellie’s hand. It was unexpected, but Ellie just went with it. Her hand was warm and clammy. The floor creaked where she stood. “What was your last name again, Ellie?”</p><p>“My last name?” said Ellie. She hadn’t spoke it in such a long time. She looked down at her hand, inside Danielle's hand. “It’s Williams, I guess. Ellie Williams.”</p><p>“Ellie is new to the farm.”</p><p>“It’s nice to meet you,” said Becky, fanning herself with her hand. “But you’re so young. Are you one of the ones from town?”</p><p>“No,” said Ellie, growing increasingly unsure of what she should say. “No. I’m here with—well, it’s kind of hard to explain.”</p><p>“That’s okay,” said Becky, so sweet, but strange. Her hair was like a pyre. Her cheeks, nose, and forehead were violently freckled and her eyes were very blue and misty. Like planets.</p><p>“What was that?” said Danielle. She had dropped Ellie’s hand and was now staring up at the ceiling. They all heard it then, the sounds upstairs. It was a loud thud, then some skittering like a giant rodent, and then a door slammed shut. Ellie felt a chill in her bones.</p><p>“Holy shit,” she said. She rushed back to the stairs, held onto the railing like a baseball bat, got up on her tip-toes to to see. “I knew I heard something.”</p><p>“I got it,” said Cici. “Ellie, stay here.”</p><p>“You can’t go by yourself. It’s one of them.”</p><p>Cici had drawn her pistol. Danielle was backing away, toward Becky, who sat very straight. They both looked pale, almost shocked, as birds. “It’s inside?” said Danielle. “How’d it get inside? I locked it in the barn. I used the chains.”</p><p>“I’m guessing it’s not the same one,” Cici said. “Just stay here, be very quiet. And Ellie, if you insist on coming, you keep behind me. Don’t do anything stupid.”</p><p>“Lead the way,” said Ellie.</p><p>Ellie didn’t have a gun. She’d left it in the truck. Still, she wasn’t scared. She had been through this now, so many times, with Joel. She knew what to do, and each of those fucking things she killed, since Tess, since Henry and Sam—since fucking Riley—she had recently decided: It was going to be vengeance. She wasn’t gonna take it anymore. On their way in from Pittsburg, she and Joel had stopped at a rest stop oasis in Ohio, foraged some food from a huge gas station there on the side of the freeway. She fell asleep, leaning against one of the shelves while Joel gassed up the truck, and she had a nightmare in which she saw Joel just standing in the hotel back in Pittsburg, water up to his knees, a bite mark in his hand. He told her he was going to take his own life and then instructed her calmly upon how to get to Wyoming. <em>Take the I-80,</em> he had said. He said it over and over again. She woke up unnerved. She had been clenching her jaw so that her teeth felt jagged. She never told him about the dream, but it, along with so much else, had changed her.</p><p>When she and Cici got upstairs, it was just a simple hallway with three bedrooms. One at the end, and two on each side. Only the door at the end of the hallway was closed. Based on the sounds they were hearing, it was a runner in there, hiding, probably terrified. They went slowly. Ellie could tell that Cici was gonna try to keep things quiet. The walls were painted white and very clean. Ellie gazed upon the quilts which hung there, just like the ones she had seen downstairs. There was something special about them. The colors were plain. Red, white, and blue, and the purity of such reminded her of the American flag. As she stared at the quilt, she got lost as she so often did and failed to realize that, as they were focused on the room at the end of the hall and approaching it in silence, there was another runner, vibrating real quiet in the bedroom to their right.</p><p>“Oh my god,” said Ellie.</p><p>The thing rushed them. It happened so fast, like a straight line wind, and when it went for Cici, Ellie didn’t think. It was a girl runner and not so big so she whipped it back by the hair and stuck her knife in its throat, five or six times till it died. The blood was everywhere. It was on Ellie’s face, her shirt, her hands. The sound of its death was loud, and as she dropped it to the floor, the other one came through the door, gnashing and alive. Its screams were horrifying. Even as she no longer feared them outright, the Infected were fucking demons. Ellie tripped over the dead one trying to get away, and just as she did, Cici raised her gun and shot the thing in the head, twice, point blank. It went down like a fucking sack of bricks. Ellie was on her ass and out of breath.</p><p>“Jesus fucking Christ,” she said, shaking her head out like a dog. “Is that all of them?”</p><p>“Are you okay?” said Cici. She saw the blood. She hauled Ellie up and started searching her for marks.</p><p>“I’m fine,” said Ellie. “Are you?”</p><p>“Yeah, I’m okay,” said Cici, though she seemed unsettled. “We need to get the hell out of here.”     </p><p>“What about Becky and Danielle?”</p><p>“They’re coming with us.”</p><p>“Cici?” said Danielle from the bottom of the stairs. “Ellie? Are you guys okay?”</p><p>“We’re fine,” Cici shouted down the stairs. “Just—just don’t come up here yet. It’s nothing you wanna see.”</p><p>Danielle said a prayer. She said, “Praise god that you came.”</p><p>Ellie tried wiping some of the blood off her face. It had gotten on her clothes, and she felt momentarily embarrassed. “What the fuck are we gonna do with these things?” she said. “We can’t just leave them here.” She looked at the quilt on the wall. It was bloodied. Ellie was pissed off about this. She hoped they could just make another.</p><p>“Go downstairs,” said Cici. “I’ll wrap them in sheets and drag them outside.”</p><p>“I’m covered in fucking blood,” said Ellie. “I don’t want to freak them out.”</p><p>"They’ll understand,” said Cici. “We’ve been through this sort of thing before. Though the fuckers have never gotten in the house like this.”</p><p>“What do we do with the bodies?” said Ellie. “Burn them?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Cici. “There’s plenty of fuel. It won’t be too much work.”</p><p>She dragged the bodies out one by one. She then went over to the barn by herself while Ellie, Danielle, and Becky stood outside, by the truck, and waited. Cici lured the thing out and blew it to shreds with a pipe bomb. They doused the bodies with gasoline from a canister in the shed by the garden and set them on fire in the pit at the back of the property. Then, they all drove back to the scrapyard, and though they didn’t go inside, Ellie did see rows and rows of school busses, exactly like Noah had said. Cici got out, used a rubber hose to syphon several gas cans full of fuel for the generator, and then together they all drove back to the farm on the other side of the hill where they would be safe behind the electric fence.</p><p> </p><p>Back in La Crosse, Noah and Joel had found the detritus that had been drawing the turkey vultures from the bluffs. It was a clicker, facedown with parts of its neck ripped out. Could've been dogs, or maybe its own kind. </p><p>"Centennial Hall," said Noah, once they got there. </p><p>"There it is," said Joel. </p><p>The building was straight ahead of them. It was tall, red brick, stately in its prime with massive pillars and a clocktower. Of late, it had been devoured whole by vines robust as ankle tendons. The clocktower was plagued by black scorch marks, too, and the grass surrounding was probably waist-high. There were no more signs, no banners or flags. The building seemed deeply haunted, with the wind whistling through its veins. The clouds were big on the horizon. Joel feared a storm.</p><p>He was getting that feeling again, too, like they were being watched. "Noah," he said.</p><p>But Noah was already headed to the clicker, the dead one, splayed out in the middle of the road. He threw a rock at one of the vultures, which had been picking at its clothes unscrupulously, and the thing hissed back to the skies. Noah crouched down to get a better look. He hadn't seen an actual clicker since the last time he was here, since his dad.</p><p>"Noah," said Joel, surveying the quaint and rural atmosphere. Something was not right.</p><p>"It's okay," said Noah. </p><p>But it wasn't okay. Joel had seen it first, the thing that was set to change them. The clicker wasn't dead. It flopped over onto its back, surprising Noah and sending him off-balance. He stumbled as it screeched its terrible song, and its face, up close, was like a demon. Joel was there before he had the space to react. He pulled the trigger on his shotgun, close enough so that its head seemed to explode off its shoulders. It went down. Joel grabbed Noah by the collar and looked him over good. He said, "Noah. Noah. You okay?"</p><p>Noah thought about losing his guts, keeling over in the street. It had been some kind of event, and he had never been that close before. "I'm fine," he said, exhilarated. "I'm okay."</p><p>"Thank Jesus."</p><p>They decided to ascend the clocktower after that. It was the highest point they could see, and it seemed a safe place for to find their respite, for now. They climbed a bunch of narrow, spiral stairs and then a ladder, and a lot of it was rotted or rusted, but they made it okay. When they got to the top, it was a small space with a window and a circuit breaker, an old empty bottle of booze but that was all. They looked out over the burnt-out college campus, how it had gone to seed and lost its innocence. They saw the clouds, too, gathering in the north, looking like a definite storm now, moving south with some speed, straight for them and for Viroqua thereafter. Leaning heavily with their backs against the wall, they caught their breath, and then Joel took the two-way radio out of his back-pack. He hooked up the repeater, something Noah's dad had rigged up a long time ago to help them extend the range of the frequency. </p><p>"We should radio your mom," he said, "before we head inside the hall. I don't know if it'll work. But on the off chance it does, we should let her and Ellie know we're okay."</p><p>Noah was in agreement, even as he spoke little. Joel found the channel and commenced his talking in the radio. <em>Sylvia Plath, </em>he said, loud and clear. <em>Sylvia Plath, do you copy? This is Ryan Adams. We are okay. Sylvia Plath. Do you copy?  Do you copy?</em></p>
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<a name="section0009"><h2>9. Centennial Hall</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p> </p>
  <p>    <em>"It can't be any worse out there, can it?"</em><br/></p>
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          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>On the tape deck:</p><p>"Take a Bow" by Madonna (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDeiovnCv1o">youtube</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/5oqukcHWfqq7HGjyKwLX1y?si=UM9-jmviT7Sp0n4pLKBi4g">spotify</a>)<br/></p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Inside Centennial Hall, Joel and Noah found what looked to have been the leftovers of an elaborate ritual, or religious celebration. The hall was full of candles and red curtains, rows of pews, dead lights strung up from the ceiling and a great deal of writing on the walls. Some of it spray paint, some marker, some regular paint. It was mostly Bible verses that Joel no longer recognized. The building had been completely sealed for what looked like years, and there was so much dust, they kept coughing and could no longer smell the dead or anything at all. Noah found a room full of desks where twenty-five people desicated in orange robes sat dead. At the front of the room was a white board, and written there, preserved perfectly, in ink were the words: <em>Sacrifice is Life.</em></p><p>“I don’t understand,” said Noah. One by one, he was surveying the skeletons at their desks. “A suicide cult?”</p><p>“Maybe,” said Joel. “But this can’t be all of them.”</p><p>“What does it have to do with the river?” said Noah.</p><p>“We ain’t got all the information yet,” said Joel. “Just…hold your horses. We’ll keep looking.”</p><p>There were no Infected in the lower floors of Centennial Hall, no spores, no nothing. But as they ascended the stairs from floor to floor, they began to notice a distinct pattern in the art, the murals on the walls. All of it was cordyceps, the mushroom. Painted in bright oranges and pinks. Sometimes, with the pictures, there were words like, <em>Follow the Signal, </em>or <em>It is the Signal. </em>When they got to the top floor, they found two dead clickers, practically sealed to the wall in old mushroom. They put on their masks, held their guns. After some observation, they determined that the clickers were restrained upon death, chained to their chairs, which were chained to the floor. They were dressed differently, more elaborately, as priests, with gold threaded scarves and wooden sandals. <em>Sacrifice is Life. </em>That’s what it said on the floor, this time painted in a rich green. One of the dead had a book, crusted to the floor beside its feet. Joel picked it out, flipped it open to somewhere in the middle.</p><p>“It’s a journal,” said Joel. “<em>And unto us, God bestowed a Signal. The Signal chooses the living and the dead. In choosing It, we ascend</em>.”</p><p>“Jesus Christ,” said Noah. Joel handed him the journal so he could see for himself. “They did this to themselves?”</p><p>“Fuckin crazies,” said Joel. “Should’ve figured out of all this would come at least one cult that worshipped the cordyceps.”</p><p>“They saw it as a signal? A sign? A sign of what?”</p><p>“End times,” said Joel. “Revelations. Et cetera. Stranger beliefs have emerged in the wake of catastrophe. Or, at least they did.”</p><p>“This doesn’t answer our questions,” said Noah. “What should we do?”</p><p>“I got a bad feeling,” said Joel.</p><p>“Me, too,” said Noah. “Let’s get the fuck off this floor.”</p><p>Outside, it had started to rain. Thunder clipped in the distance as the day wore on. It was looking likely that they’d have to spend the night, so they set up camp on one of the lower floors, near a window. In the clocktower, they had not been able to get in touch with Cici. But Noah knew that his mom kept recordings of all incoming transmissions. Could just be they were over the hill, getting fuel, or outside on the farm. Whenever they returned, she’d see the flashing red light and know that everything was okay.</p><p>Noah still hadn’t really processed what had gone on out in the street. He wanted to thank Joel but it felt so basic. He didn’t know how.</p><p>“Well, shit,” said Joel.</p><p>They were on the fourth floor. Noah had been sparking a cooking fire. Joel was at the window, rifle in one hand. He was trying to get a better look at something down below.</p><p>“What’s wrong?” said Noah.</p><p>“I ain’t sure,” said Joel. “Come and get a look at this.”</p><p>When Noah got to the window, he saw four men in gas masks, emerging in a green pick-up truck from somewhere off the street. They were dressed like civilians, and when the Infected started to swarm, they tossed a couple stun grenades, and the horde dispersed immediately, with stragglers getting shot on the spot. Once they were clear, the men removed their gas masks, hopped off the pick-up, and started looking around.</p><p>“Who the fuck are they?” said Noah.</p><p>“I got no idea,” said Joel.</p><p>“They don’t look like cultists.”</p><p>“They ain’t cultists,” said Joel.</p><p>The men entered the building through the front doors. The doors had been heavily chained, but they seemed to have keys. Joel and Noah stood their ground in one of the rooms on the fourth floor, barricaded behind several heavy file cabinets with their guns out.</p><p>“You ever killed a person?” said Joel. “Or just Infected.”</p><p>“Plenty of thieves and reavers and shit have blown up in the minefield around our house,” said Noah.</p><p>“You ever killed a person with your gun?” said Joel, fixing him with a tense stare.</p><p>Noah shook his head. “No.”</p><p>This seemed to weigh heavily on Joel. “Well I hope that don’t have to change today, son. But if it does—”</p><p>“I’m ready,” said Noah.</p><p>Ultimately, Joel believed him. The kid was brave as hell, he had to give him that.</p><p>They could hear the men downstairs, their voices carrying through the old rotten air ducts in the walls. One of them was sent to sweep the upper floors. When they heard him getting close, Joel told Noah to stay where he was, and then he moved to position himself behind the door. When the man entered, Joel hastily disarmed him with a kind of developed strength that took him by complete surprised. Joel had the gun fixed on him now, and then he signaled for Noah to show himself and do the same.</p><p>The man was young, probably not all that much older than Noah. He had his long brown hair knotted at the back of his neck and a red bandana on his head. He had his hands up. He looked, not scared, but deeply unnerved and suspicious.</p><p>Joel said, “No need to alert your buddies. We ain’t here to hurt anybody.”</p><p>“Who the fuck are you?” said the man.</p><p>“We’re just passing through,” said Joel. “Who are you?”</p><p>“Nobody good passes through this hell hole anymore.”</p><p>“Not until now,” said Joel. “You with these…Circle fellers?”</p><p>“Fuck no,” said the man. “I live on a compound outside the city. We come into the campus every few days to clear out the leftovers.”</p><p>“The leftover what.”</p><p>“Infected,” he said. “If you haven’t noticed, the entire town is turned or dead.”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Joel. “I did notice. You mind telling us what the hell happened here?”</p><p>The man had very bright green eyes. They were uncommonly green. “Put your goddam guns down, and I’ll tell you.”</p><p>Joel looked at Noah, who was eager. They both lowered their guns, and the man exhaled, but he didn’t move. He cracked his knuckles, glanced to the door.</p><p>“You from here?” said Joel.</p><p>“I was born here,” said the man. “But my family and me left when I was a teenager.”</p><p>“You got a radio?” said Joel.</p><p>“Yeah. Why?”</p><p>“Why don’t you tell your buddies downstairs what’s going on.”</p><p>The man hesitated, seeming a little frazzled. He picked up the walkie off his belt and radioed down to the first floor. “Maverick, this is Iceman. Do you copy? Over.”</p><p>“Maverick and Iceman?” said Joel. “Seriously?”</p><p>“We like <em>Top Gun</em>,” said Iceman.</p><p>"Clearly," said Joel.</p><p>“What’s up, Iceman,” said Maverick, over the radio. “You got a report?”</p><p>"I got two civilians on the fourth floor,” said Iceman. “Room 402. They’re friendlies, just taking shelter from the storm. Over.”</p><p>“You got civilians?” said Maverick.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Iceman. “Weapons down. Over.”</p><p>There was a long pause. Maverick said, “I’m coming up.”</p><p>“Just you?”</p><p>“Just me. Over and out.”</p><p>Iceman hooked the walkie back to his belt.</p><p>Joel said, “Can we trust this Maverick, Iceman?” </p><p>“Yeah,” said Iceman. “We’re not fucking military. We don’t care that you’re here, man. We just come into town to kill those things.”</p><p>“You said you’ve been coming to the campus, specifically,” said Joel. “Is this where it’s all concentrated? The Infected?”</p><p>“Pretty much,” said Iceman. “If we don’t kill them, they wander down the river, to the outskirts. People live out there.”</p><p>“We found a dog,” said Joel. “With a bullet in its gut, in the southern part of the city. Was that you?”</p><p>“No,” said Iceman. “But reavers pass through on occasion, and other types. They probably killed it for food then got spooked. Look, dude. I’m telling you now. Whatever you’re doing here, you should leave, as soon as possible. La Crosse ain’t a safe place.”</p><p>“What happened here?” said Noah. He stepped out from behind the file cabinet. He held the rifle down by his side. “That’s all we wanna know. Then we’ll leave.”</p><p>Iceman took a deep breath. Everything was chill and copacetic, and that was not something Joel had grown accustomed to. It must have been that Midwestern nice.            </p><p>“Maverick’ll tell you,” said Iceman. </p><p>Joel cocked his shotgun once, almost to punctuate the moment. He could be real intimidating when he wanted to. He then returned to Iceman his pistol, like a a good faith gesture, holding it by the barrel. Iceman took it, holstered it by his side, and thanked him kindly.</p><p>The door opened then, slowly. Joel raised his shotgun and said, “Maverick?”</p><p>“That’s me,” said the man. He came inside with his hands up. He had red hair and a red beard. He was a little older than Iceman, probably ten years or so. “I come in peace.”</p><p>Joel lowered the shotgun.</p><p>“Everything okay?” said Maverick. He was looking at Iceman, real wary.</p><p>"Everything’s fine,” said Iceman. “This is—” He looked at Joel. “What were your names again?”</p><p>“I’m Joel, and this is Noah.”</p><p>“You guys father and son?”</p><p>“No,” said Joel. “We’re just looking for answers.”</p><p>“What kind of answers?” said Maverick. He was wearing a blue Nike windbreaker. Outside, the rain and the wind had kicked up. Thunder bellowed.</p><p>Joel beckoned for Noah then, to come take over. His job was to protect, which is what he was doing, but the questioning was up to the kid.</p><p>“What’s going on here?” said Noah. He approached, slung the rifle strap over his shoulder. “What happened in this place?”</p><p>“Why do you care?” said Maverick.</p><p>“Because my mom and me got a farm, down in Viroqua,” said Noah. “The tributaries down there are all fucking contaminated with spores. It turned an entire Amish community and a bunch of people in the town. The whole Driftless is turning, all in the past two years, and a couple guys that came through lead us to believe that whatever was causing it, it was originating in La Crosse. That's why we're here.”</p><p>“It’s poisoning the rivers?” said Maverick.</p><p>“Yes,” said Noah. “Everything that’s flowing downstream from La Crosse is full of spores. Man, we can’t even trust the water table anymore. We’re gonna have to leave our farm after surviving there for twenty years. I just wanna know why.”</p><p>Maverick seemed a little pained by this. He had this kind of viking look about him. He was big and robust, and he went over to one of the desks, upended by the window, and picked up a chair. He sat down, like he was tired, and he started striking his knife against a whetstone from his pocket. “That sucks,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, man.”</p><p>“Do you know?” said Noah.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Maverick. “I know. You seen these signs everywhere, the fucking <em>Circle of the Holy Signal</em>?"</p><p>"Yeah, we saw," said Noah.</p><p>"That’s a cult that took over after the military left, all the way back in 2016. They were armed up, pushed out a lot of families with strongholds over the course of like, a year? We all went north, a bunch of us built up a compound in Midway. Every fucking week, for a while, people were coming to us, escaping, with stories of the Circle. They used the Fireflies to preach and recruit around the region, mainly Madison and Minneapolis, on the promise of some sort of scientific research that could lead to a cure.”</p><p>“The Fireflies?” said Joel. “They had a hand in this?”</p><p>“No,” said Maverick. “But they provided a platform for a lot of little paramilitary groups in this area."</p><p>"Yeah, I think I remember that," said Joel.</p><p>"There wasn’t a lot of support up here for a long time, except for the Fireflies," said Maverick. "People believed anything they said. I think they thought they were doing good or something. Doing right by the region. I mean, we had been mostly abandoned. I don't blame them. The Circle made them think it was some sort of sanctuary.”</p><p>“But it wasn’t,” said Joel. “What was it then?”</p><p>“A straight-up cult,” said Maverick. “They were like, totalitarian here. They provided food and shelter, if you believed. They killed you, or imprisoned you if you fought. They worshipped the goddam mushroom, people said. The fucking cordyceps. They thought it was like, a sign from God. And they would sacrifice the Infected, like an offering.”</p><p>“Sacrifice?” said Noah.</p><p>This was the part they did not know, that they could not glean from the ramblings in the journals, or the writing on the wall.</p><p>“They would capture them, cut their throats and bleed them,” said Maverick. "When they ran out of Infected, they started abducting people from the town and turning them, and then do the same thing.” </p><p>“They would turn people on purpose?” said Joel. </p><p>“Yeah,” said Maverick. “It's pretty fucked up.”</p><p>“What did they do with the bodies," said Noah, "of all the dead Infected?"</p><p>“Dumped them off the bluffs,” said Maverick. “Right into the Mississippi. Must have been like this for, hell, ten years? Thousands dead. I don't remember."</p><p>"Jesus," said Joel. </p><p>Noah stayed silent upon the revelation. He didn't seem to have much more to say. He picked up his hands, looked at them as if contemplating the whole and death of his youth.</p><p>"Anyway," said Maverick. "They all killed or turned themselves like two years ago. Like a Jonestown thing. They're gone. Maybe you’ve seen some of the aftermath here, in Centennial Hall.” He was looking at Noah now, shell-shocked, staring down at the floor. “If the rivers are poisoned down in the Driftless, could it be from all the bodies?" continued Maverick. "Maybe the spores got waterborne somehow? If you go down to the banks of the Mississippi, you can even see. The mushroom grows everywhere. It’s a bad place."</p><p>The room had grown subdued and morose. Iceman came up from where he'd been chilling off to the side, looking at his boots. He was sorrowful, looking up at Noah like they were victims of the same war. “I’m sorry about your farm,” he said. “I know what that’s like, man. I’m sorry.”</p><p>“You guys can come back with us,” said Maverick. “Go get your mom, in Viroqua. There’s plenty of land up in Midway. New people come all the time.”</p><p>“No thanks,” said Noah.</p><p>"The offer stands," said Maverick.</p><p>"I need to see it," said Noah, looking at Joel now. "The riverbanks."</p><p>Joel shrugged. "The truck is on the other side of town," he said. "Maybe in the morning, we can drive over, get a look."</p><p>“You shouldn't stay here,” said Maverick, resigned. He got up from his chair, sheathed his knife. “We can give you a lift, to the banks. There's probably Infected that need killing out that way anyway. You two know how to kill clickers, right?"</p><p>Joel sighed, hugely, was thinking about Cici, what she would say. He didn't want to walk her kid to the edge of the earth, looking down into the maw of the devil, but he didn't have a choice in it. He decided it could've been a lot worse. They could have walked into the cult, still active. In some ways, it was a mighty relief, the fact they'd come into the aftermath. They had their guides and everything: Iceman and Maverick. "Yeah, we do," he said.</p><p>"Then come on. Let's go."</p><p> </p><p>They went outside into the rain, and Joel and Noah road in the bed of the truck, while Maverick and Iceman sat up front in the cab. The other two guys, they met them briefly, but they stayed behind, had been cooking something that smelled good out of a can in a fire back in Centennial Hall. There was something nice about that, thought Joel. Kind of wholesome.</p><p>They drove about two miles in the storm, the lightning making huge webs in the sky. Noah was quiet the whole way, all coiled up inside like one of his mother's makeshift bombs. Joel kept trying not to see himself in all that but it was impossible. There wasn't any way to defuse the boy. You just had to give him the space and the time to blow.</p><p>They headed north somewhat until they crossed the La Crosse River by bridge. The La Crosse was a tributary that paled in comparison to the massive scope of its source. The Mississippi itself churned in the stormy weather, its water black as tar and slapping to the banks. They parked beneath a bunch of trees off the side of the road in a wooded area, climbed a bluff and forged ahead through the pelting rain. At the dead end was a huge stone table stained permanently with blood, and when they got out there, they peered over the side, and they saw, exactly what had been described to them. The mushroom grew right down the side of the bluff and into the banks, plumes of it, beautiful in its deadly posture, bending toward the water as if to kiss its depths. With the rain, there would be no spores in the air. It would all be stifled down there in the water, proliferating with haste and sending downstream. The cordyceps could be seen growing up and down the banks, as far as the eye could see.</p><p>Noah had his shotgun in his right hand, standing there in the rain. He stared down into the water. Joel went over there, clasped his hand to the kid's shoulder. He said, "Is this it," having to shout somewhat to be heard over the storm. "Is this what you needed to see?"</p><p>Noah just nodded, simply. He didn't waste any time. Then, when they heard the horde of Infected coming up behind them, crawling out of the earth as true undead, they turned around and picked their guns up to their shoulders, prepared to face the music. It was so many, Maverick and Iceman shouted to retreat to the truck, but instead, Noah calmly and quickly lit up a pipe bomb from the parts in Joel's back-pack and tossed it dead into the center of the mass. It was probably twenty or so deep. They all turned to see and blew to fireworks. Those that remained got shot. It all seemed very plain in the chaos of the storm. Joel thought the same thing now that he had thought earlier, kicking through the body parts, making sure they were all dead in the grass. It could have been a lot worse.</p><p> </p><p>They thanked Iceman and Maverick, who gave them a ride back to their truck at the O'Reilly's Auto Parts on the south side of the city. They were headed back now, to their families and their farm up in Midway, having done Noah and Joel a very gracious favor. Driving home in the storm, Joel had to evade some flooding on the main road, so they stopped at the junction where Highway 27 turned to Highway 14 in Westby and parked under an awning at an old drive-in movie theater. The screen had been torn in half a long time before by what looked to be a tornado, and the remains had overgrown with vine. It was all whipping in the wind now. Joel remembered tornadoes from his youth, and the fear they had instilled in his heart. Anytime they had to go down to the cellar, he remembered suppressing his anxieties to assuage Tommy’s. It would be a common theme for him, running the undercurrent of his whole life. He hoped that Noah would not turn out the same. And as for Ellie, he did not even think about that. He had not found a way to think about that yet, what that meant to him. If it meant anything at all, or everything. That was too deep to think. That was something else.</p><p>This was not a cyclone kind of storm, not that day, thought Joel. It was just steady rain. The brunt of it was past them now and the thunder had become a low rumble in the distance. It was getting to be pretty dark. He did wonder what Ellie might be doing. Looking out a window probably, and scraping her knife against a piece of wood. This much, he could think about. She didn’t really fear rainy weather. She seemed to like it, in fact. The first time he'd spent any real time with her at all, it had been raining just like this, the two of them waiting for Tess at the safe house in Boston.</p><p>“What are we gonna do?” said Noah, after a little while. He had his shotgun in his lap. He was looking out the window at the rainy field, the wind blowing through the grass and the tall wildflowers.</p><p>“We’re just gonna wait it out for a while,” said Joel. “As soon as the rain lets up, we’ll get back on the road. Shouldn't be too long now.”</p><p>“No,” said Noah. “I don’t mean tonight. I mean, me and my mom. What are we gonna do? We can’t stay here. Not anymore. It’s fucked, Joel. We’re fucked.”</p><p>Joel took a deep breath and put his hands on the steering wheel. It was a dejected tone in that truck. He said, “I talked to your mom about that, yesterday. We’ll help you guys get wherever you wanna go, you can count on it.”</p><p>“Why?” said Noah, earnestly. He was looking at Joel in confusion, his hair still damp and curling behind his ears. “Why do you care about us?”</p><p>“I don’t know," said Joel. "But I do know that I ain’t gonna leave you all alone here, fending for yourselves.”</p><p>“Is it about my mom?” said Noah. “Do you like her or something?”</p><p>“Excuse me?” said Joel.</p><p>“I’m just asking,” said Noah. “I don’t care.”</p><p>“It ain’t like that,” said Joel. “I hardly know your mom.”</p><p>”That doesn’t mean anything.”</p><p>”I said it ain’t like that. But I do know enough, about the two of you. And Ellie, well. She seems to like you guys a lot, and this place.”</p><p>“That matters to you?” said Joel. “Ellie’s opinions?”</p><p>”Sometimes,” said Joel. “I guess. That's—that ain't easy.”</p><p>Noah set his head against the window, fogging it up with his breath. “Well, thanks,” he said. “Either way.”</p><p>“You’re welcome,” said Joel.</p><p>There was no music to be had on the radio. Noah had one cassette tape in the car, which they played on the tape deck for the next hour, waiting for the rain to give. It was a compilation of Madonna songs from the 1990s. Joel found it curious. When it had first begun, he almost started to laugh.</p><p>“This Cici’s music?” he said.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Noah. "Sorry."</p><p>“Better than nothing. My mom used to listen to this stuff when she would drop me off at school.”</p><p>”Hey,” said Noah. “I meant to ask you something.”</p><p>”Shoot," said Joel.</p><p>”What the hell is <em>Top Gun</em>?” </p><p>It was not quite as torturous as it seemed.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0010"><h2>10. The Yellow Brick Road</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>“Goodnight, baby girl."</em>
    <br/>
  </p>
</div>
          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>On the record player:</p><p>"Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" by Elton John (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDOL7iY8kfo">youtube</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4IRHwIZHzlHT1FQpRa5RdE?si=aoLL51RjT-CVlQi6TodO_Q">spotify</a>)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Around ten or so, Ellie was sitting in the window of the farmhouse, looking out at the rain. She was carving into a piece of wood with her knife, something she’d picked up outside. Her carvings had no direction and no intentionality. She didn’t know how to carve shapes out of wood, but she thought that would be neat to learn someday.</p><p>“Hey, Ellie. Do you want some cocoa?” said Cici. She was heating milk in a pan on the stove. She had her hair down and she was wearing soft pajamas. She looked pretty and mild in a way that seemed to Ellie as effortless.</p><p>“You guys have cocoa?” said Ellie.</p><p>Cici smiled. “We do. But no marshmallows, I’m sorry to report.”</p><p>“I definitely want some cocoa."</p><p>They all sat around in the living room, drinking their cocoa, which was delicious. Cici had some music playing quietly on the record player. It was Elton John, his <em>Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road </em>album from the 1970s. Ellie didn't recognize it, but like with most things she had never experienced before, she thought it was pretty neat. The music didn’t seem to bother Danielle and Becky and it brought a sort of nice, old fashioned feel to the house as if all was normal and everything would be okay, even if somewhat haunted by the past. Danielle and Becky were worried about Danielle’s father Jeb, and her brother Zach, who had been out hunting since that morning. They were supposed to be gone overnight, but the storm and the Infected was putting pressure on the situation.          </p><p>“They’ll shoot if they have to,” said Danielle, comforting Becky with her hand on her knee. Danielle was sturdier and less concerned. She was also not pregnant. That seemed to make a difference, thought Ellie. “They know what to do.”</p><p>“I locked your house tight,” said Cici. “No more sick will get in.”</p><p>“What if they break through the windows?” said Becky.</p><p>“They would only do that if there was something inside they wanted,” said Cici. “The house is dark and quiet, which is important. The sick are generally less active at night around here, because there’s just less sound.”</p><p>“Thank you,” said Becky, her red hair still braided tightly to her head, though it was getting piecey around her temples. “That’s a good reminder.”</p><p>Ellie sipped her cocoa, looking down into its chocolatey depths, thinking about how Cici was thoughtful in the way she referred to them as “sick.” The Amish girls did not seem to look at the Infected as if they were inhuman, but as if they were merely humans who had gotten sick. <em>What if the people are still inside? </em>Sam had said. </p><p>
  <em>I'm scared of that happening to me.</em>
</p><p>Cici came over and sat down next to Ellie. Together they looked down at their cocoa, then back to the fire. Danielle had gone to the kitchen for a glass of water, and Becky had gone with her. She seemed too anxious to be alone. They were leaning against the counter now, and speaking another language, which Ellie obviously did not recognize. </p><p>“They’re speaking some sort of German,” said Cici, like she had read her mind. </p><p>“That’s so cool,” said Ellie. “What do you think they're talking about?”</p><p>”Probably Noah.”</p><p>”Noah?”</p><p>”Danielle has a crush on Noah,” said Cici, taking a sip from her cocoa. “She always has.”</p><p>”Seriously?” said Ellie.</p><p>”Yeah,” said Cici. She had her hands tucked into her sleeves. You could only see the tips of her fingers where she held the mug. “I think he liked her, too, but it was short-lived, more than a year ago, and he’s very stoic.”</p><p>”What happened?”</p><p>“William died,” said Cici, shrugging. “Noah sort of gave up after that. On a lot of stuff.”</p><p>”Geez,” said Ellie. “I’m sorry.”</p><p>”Don’t worry. I think he's finally starting to come back around,” said Cici. “But at the end of the day, Danielle’s Amish, and Noah’s not. Her religion would never allow it anyway.”</p><p>”Religion?” said Ellie. “Why would that matter? Aren’t there more important things?”</p><p>Cici shrugged. “Maybe to us.”</p><p>A little bit later, Ellie thought she saw a set of headlights come swooping up the hill, some ways down the driveway, out behind the electric gate near the trees. Ellie got spooked. She realized who it had to be, and she set down her cocoa on the coffee table and went running for the window.</p><p>“Ellie?” said Cici.</p><p>She could feel everybody looking. She touched the glass. “They’re back,” she said.</p><p> </p><p>“Should you call your mom on the radio?” said Joel. He was pulling in through the trees, up the long driveway, toward the gate. It was dark, deathly quiet. “I don’t think they’re expecting us so soon.”</p><p>Noah had been quiet for most of the ride. He said, “Yeah, I'm on it.”</p><p>He took out the walkie as Joel put the truck into park, but then he thought he saw something unsettling waver over by the tree line, kind of a scribbly noise in the dark. He killed the engine, gestured for Noah to be quiet. Together, they listened. They could hear the crickets, the wind in the trees.</p><p>Then, the walkie went off. It was Cici, startling them both. She said, “Noah, is that you guys? Over.”</p><p>In the long night of the silent countryside, even the slightest disturbance could draw out the enemy. Joel shook his head, and Noah turned off the radio. Coming out of the trees then, almost immediately, interested in the sound from the truck, it was a clicker. Then one more. Then another. Noah and Joel both picked up their guns.</p><p>"If we molotov those things, more will just come out of the trees," said Noah.</p><p>“I’m guessing the fence is hot,” said Joel.</p><p>“Definitely,” said Noah.</p><p>“We need your mom to turn off the fence so we can get inside. They’re clickers, so I reckon we can make it, if we’re quiet.”</p><p>Noah turned on the walkie. He said, softly. “Mom. Do you copy? It’s us, but there’s a problem. Over.”</p><p>The frequency was quiet. Nobody was responding.</p><p>“Mom?” said Noah. “Mom, are you there?”</p><p>There was a tussle then. It was Ellie. She had picked up the radio. “Noah?” she said. “Is it you guys?”</p><p>“It’s us,” he said. “Hey. Where’s my mom?”</p><p>“She’s heading out to the crow’s nest. She told me to stay here until she radioed.”</p><p>“Shit,” said Noah. “Is the fence hot?”</p><p>“Yeah,” said Ellie. “She said to turn it off when she gives the all-clear.”</p><p>Noah looked at Joel, who took the walkie. “Ellie?” he said.</p><p>“Joel?” said Ellie. She sounded relieved to hear his voice. “Hey. Holy shit. Are you guys okay?”</p><p>“We’re fine,” said Joel. “But we got clickers, outside the electric fence. We’re still in the truck.”</p><p>“Clickers?” said Ellie</p><p>A floodlight came on overhead then, sudsing the earth with pure white light and surprising the hell out of them. Joel had to shield his eyes. The sound it made, a great, electric humming, was enough to draw attention from the clickers, who screamed.</p><p>“Ellie, kill the fence,” said Joel, fixing to get the hell out of there.</p><p>“What about Cici?” she said.</p><p>“Just do it.”</p><p>Ellie obeyed. They both exited the truck at the same time. Something exploded behind them then, a long, fiery curtain. They stumbled forward, and the clickers went straight to the fire—them and twenty more, emerging from the darkness. Joel and Noah made a break for the gate. Noah hauled it open, but its convulsive moaning brought some more Infected out of the trees. Joel fired his pistol a few times into the darkness, then pulled the gate closed behind them, dropped the latch, and shouted into the radio for Ellie to hit the power. Ellie confirmed. They backed away then as a handful of runners rushed the fence. They were gutted by the electricity and burned to death in minutes, crumbling into char. The smell was terrible. Soon, all went quiet aside from the fire burning through on the other side, crackling as an ode to summer.</p><p>“What the hell just happened?” said Joel. It must have been two molotovs, maybe three to start a fire that fast and big.</p><p>“Mom?” Noah shouted up, toward the crow’s nest</p><p>“It was me,” said Cici. She was climbing down the ladder.</p><p>"It was you?" said Joel.</p><p>“Thank Jesus that worked.” Cici almost started crying as her boots hit the ground. She had been carrying her rifle which she dropped when she saw Noah. She ran to him and grabbed him by the ears. He hugged her tight, picked her up off the ground. “Thank god,” she said. “Thank god you’re okay.” Then she looked at Joel. “Thank you, Joel. Thank you.”</p><p>Joel simply nodded chivalrously, having done his part. Then, looking away so as to spare them their privacy and switched on the radio again. He said, “Good work, Ellie.”</p><p>“I’ll come out and meet you,” she said.</p><p>“No, you stay right there, where it’s safe,” said Joel. “I’m coming. Over and out.”</p><p>Ellie waited on the porch. She was ringing her hands. She hadn't realized how freaked out she'd been until that very moment. When Noah and Cici came up first, they were talking about things she couldn’t hear. Ellie watched them with a strange kind of longing and excitement, even as she felt she should probably look away. She couldn’t help it. Noah had his arm around Cici's shoulders, seemed to be reassuring her about something. Ellie had never known that sort of love before, or ever really even seen it up close. She found it to be fascinating, like watching a movie, but she was in it.</p><p>Noah saluted her as they walked by and said, “All clear, cap'n.”</p><p>She laughed.</p><p>Joel was coming up, too. He was looking around, as if on patrol. When he saw her though, he dropped his guard and smiled in this kind of bashful way. Then he came up the steps and  hooked his thumbs over his belt. "Hey there," he said.</p><p>Ellie was relieved to see him. She was relieved that he was not dead. And it was not just seeing him that put her at ease. It was his bigness, and how he filled his space. His familiar smell and how it never seemed to change. She held her hands behind her back now and said, “Hey. You made it.”</p><p>"I told you we would,” said Joel. He reached behind him then, took something out of his back pocket. It was all rolled up. “You did good back there. You and Cici both. You saved us.”</p><p>“Thanks,” she said.</p><p>“I got this for you.” He handed her the sweatshirt.</p><p> Ellie took it, shocked and confused. She immediately fanned it out, and got excited. “Holy shit,” she said. “This is for me?”</p><p>“Yes ma’am,” said Joel. “Try it on. Make sure it fits.”</p><p>She tugged it over her head and held her arms down by her sides. It was soft inside. It fit perfectly. She looked right at him and said. “How do I look?”</p><p>“Very collegiate,” said Joel. He rumpled her on the hair, once. She thanked him, stood there vibrating, just for a minute. Then she followed him into the house.  </p><p> </p><p>There was a moment that evening when Joel felt himself living a momentary crisis. Keenly aware of all that had happened, he sipped cocoa and looked down at his hands. He had felt a seam rip, somewhere inside his chest, exposing a raw piece of his memory from the past twenty years. He could not pinpoint when it had happened, but he felt it now. Cold inside, he was looking out the window and leaned with his forehead on the glass. Cici had turned off the floodlight, leaving the night as quiet as it had been when they’d arrived.</p><p>At some point, Danielle, the Amish girl with the yellow hair came up beside him and stood as little and straight as a candle. It sort of took him by surprise. She said, “Hello, Joel.”</p><p>She had been introduced to him earlier. Her and her pregnant sister-in-law. Joel glanced down at her and straightened up proper, a product of his good Texas manners. “Hello,” he said. “Danielle, is it?”</p><p>“That is right,” said Danielle. She looked out the window then, into the depths of the night sky. “I just wanted to ask a question. Did you happen to see any other men while you were driving over the ridge?”</p><p>“No,” said Joel, thinking on it. “No, I don’t believe we did.”</p><p>“Okay,” she said, disappointed, looking down at her boot laces. “Thank you. I would have asked Noah, but he is busy.”</p><p>“You missing someone?” he said.</p><p>“My father and brother,” she said. “They went out hunting earlier today.”</p><p>“They know their way around the land?”</p><p>“Yes, sir.”</p><p>“Then I’m sure they’re fine,” said Joel. “I’m sure they just took shelter from the storm. It was pretty strong.”</p><p>“Thank you,” said Danielle. “I’m sure you’re right.”</p><p>Joel glanced back to Noah. He had been talking to Cici and Ellie over at the kitchen table, about what they’d learned back in La Crosse. “Are you and Noah friends?”</p><p>“Yes,” she said. “I mean, sort of. We’re the same age. I have known him a long time.”</p><p>“Do you all know what’s happening, with the land around here? The rivers?”</p><p>“Yes,” said Danielle, wistful. “We do. I know that Cici and Noah are preparing to leave because of it, with you and Ellie.”</p><p>“What will you do, you and your family?”</p><p>“I think we will go north,” she said, her hands balled up in the front of her dress. “We have lost everyone, and now our farm, too. We cannot stay here, especially not alone.”</p><p>“I’m very sorry,” said Joel. “About your farm, your family, your community. All of it.”</p><p>“Thank you, but you don’t need to say anything,” she said. “The Lord gives, but he also takes away. We’ve heard of other communities up north of La Crosse who may welcome us, many include Amish.”</p><p>“We met a couple of guys from a place called Midway. You know it?” said Joel.</p><p>“Yes, we have heard of it.”</p><p>“They seem to have a good thing going on, north of the spores. I’m sure they could use people like you, farmers and such.”</p><p>“Becky and I have many skills that we think we could offer. And my father and Zach, that’s my brother, they are very skilled as well.”</p><p>“There you go,” said Joel, smiling. She seemed broken somehow, very sad. He felt a little embarrassed for noticing. He said, “Are you doing okay? You just worried about your dad?”</p><p>“Yes,” she said, trying to liven up a little. She put on a very good happy face. She said, “But I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure they’re fine.”</p><p>“Okay then.” He looked back out the window. In the reflection on the glass, he could see Danielle, looking back toward the kitchen table. Noah looked up, right at her, just for a second, and she immediately turned back toward the window and sighed. Joel wondered, briefly. Perhaps? He sipped some more of his cocoa. </p><p>“Noah is brave,” she said. “Him and Cici. They have helped us for so long. It is scary to imagine life without them.”</p><p>Joel felt that same seam tugging open again, from before. It caused him strife, but it was also easy to jury-rig it shut, for now. The cocoa was warming his soul. It was trying to make his problems seem silly. “I know what you mean,” he said.</p><p>“How long have you known Ellie?”</p><p>“Not long,” said Joel.</p><p>“Well, she speaks highly of you,” said Danielle. “It seems you have been through a lot together. Do you think that sort of thing can change someone?”</p><p>“Yes, I do,” said Joel.</p><p> </p><p>That night, he and Ellie were getting ready for bed in the upstairs bedroom. Danielle and Becky were sleeping in Noah’s room, across from Cici’s at the end of the hall, and Noah was sleeping downstairs. As Ellie brushed her hair in her gray pajama pants and her new sweatshirt, Joel sat thinking and looking down at his knuckles. Noah was still awake downstairs. You could hear him playing some music on the record player, real low. It was Elton John, something very old that he only remembered because it was a golden classic that he might have heard on the oldies radio station when he was a kid, or that his grandma might have listened to back at the dairy farm in Odessa. It was a song called <em>Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road. </em>The song was nostalgic.</p><p>
  <em>Goodbye, yellow brick road, where the dogs of society howl.</em>
</p><p>“Hey, Joel?” said Ellie.</p><p>She was turned around now, looking back at him, holding the brush in both hands. She looked like a little girl.</p><p>“Yes,” he said.</p><p>“I was just wondering. Cici said we’re gonna leave in a couple of days. That we’re going to a place called Moline, in Illinois?”</p><p>“That’s right,” said Joel. “It’s right on the I-80, which is how we get back on the road to Tommy’s.”</p><p>”Are they gonna stay in Illinois?”</p><p>”I don’t know, Ellie. That’ll be up to them.”</p><p>She set the brush down, and then she came and sat down next to him, right next to him, on the bed. He scootched a little to give her space. The bed creaked. She pushed her sleeve up. Together they looked at the bite scar on her arm. “Should we tell them?” she said.</p><p>Joel studied it closely, the pink ridges and bumps. It was almost like a flower. A mean flower. Tenderly, he pushed the sleeve back down. “No,” he said. “Not yet.”</p><p>She sighed and looked down at her feet, which barely touched the ground. “Okay.”</p><p>“How you doing?” he said.</p><p>This seemed to surprise her. She shrugged. “I’m okay. Why?”</p><p>“I was just wondering,” he said. He took a great, deep breath. "We could talk. If you want."</p><p>“Talk about what?”</p><p>“About Pittsburgh," he said. He wasn't looking at her. She was terrifying in moments like these. Joel did not fear Infected or bad guys with guns. But with Ellie, sometimes, he was speechless. He didn't know why.</p><p>“You mean about Henry and Sam?” said Ellie.</p><p>“Sure,” said Joel. “Henry and Sam.”</p><p>“I don’t know,” she said, turning slightly toward him. “Do <em>you</em> wanna talk?”</p><p>“I'll listen," he said. "It's just been a lot that's gone on. Spending time with Noah made me realize that."</p><p>Hanging her head then, she reached into her pocket. She switched her knife open, eyeing its shiny blade. She did this whenever she didn’t know what else to do with her hands. It was a nervous habit. “It just seems so pointless, don’t you think?”</p><p>“What seems pointless?”</p><p>“Their deaths,” she said. She closed the knife back up and put it away. “Their lives. I don’t know. It’s like, one minute they were there, and the next, they weren’t. Poof. They were dead, and we were gone. We’d made plans. Now, it’s like their lives didn’t mean anything at all. Like they never even existed.”</p><p>“They meant something to you,” said Joel. “To us. For a little while. That’s more than some can say, in the end.”</p><p>“I guess,” said Ellie. “I’m just scared. I don’t wanna lose anymore people, Joel.”</p><p>She looked up at him with big eyes, like puddles. “I know, Ellie.”</p><p>“What about you?” she said, turning the tables. “Are you okay? After La Crosse? What Noah told us, about the sacrifices, like, shit. That seems pretty gnarly.”</p><p>“It was gnarly,” said Joel. “It was. But for the most part, we came into the aftermath. There was less action than we had anticipated. I’m okay, Ellie. You don't need to worry about me.”</p><p>“Well, I worry,” she said. “So deal with it. And I just—all I mean is, if you ever wanna talk, I’ll be here. Okay?”</p><p>He was looking down at his hands again, where they were folded in his lap. He felt big and mean beside her. He wondered if he deserved her, or any of this at all. He said, “Thank you.”</p><p>“You’re welcome,” she said. She smiled then, like she was satisfied with the conversation and therefore, unburdened. Then, she got up and went back to the mirror and continued to brush her hair. “I used Cici’s shampoo today,” she said. “Does my hair look shinier to you?”</p><p>Joel found this very amusing. He said, “Yeah. You know, I think it actually does.”</p><p>“You should try it," she said.</p><p>“Ha,” said Joel.</p><p>“You might just like it…”</p><p>"I'm turning out the light now."</p><p>“I’m serious…”</p><p>“Goodnight, kiddo.”</p><p>She sighed, set down the brush on the bureau. She seemed herself again, so positive and bright. It was a relief.</p><p>“Goodnight, Joel," she said.</p><p> </p><p>That night, Joel could not sleep. He felt like his brain was working overtime for some reason. After Ellie dropped off and her breathing gone even, he got up silently and put his boots back on and went outside to chop some firewood. He had noticed it dwindling in supply upon their return, and it would still be a few days before they left the farm. The nights were getting colder. He loaded his shotgun and went out past the creek to a healthy pine grove just inside the confines of the electric fence. He didn't hear a soul out there, Infected or otherwise, only the bubbling of the poison creek and the crickets and the whip-poor-wills. The rain had stopped but the sky was still dark with clouds, and you could not see the moon. He cleaned up a few logs on the edge of the tree line, bound them up and hauled them in on a pallet, which he pulled on a rope. Once back to the house, he split the logs and left the axe on the stump, stacked several bundles near the chimney and then carried another bundle back to the house.</p><p>As he was walking in the door, he ran into Cici. She had on a blue wool jacket and a pair of warm gloves. He surprised the hell out of her when he came in the door. It made him feel bad. </p><p>"Joel," she said. "Holy shit. You scared me."</p><p>"I'm sorry," he said, setting down the bundle and unbuttoning his coat. "I didn't know you were up."</p><p>"I couldn't sleep," she said. "I thought I'd chop some firewood."</p><p>"Beat you to it," said Joel, showing her the bundle under his arm.</p><p>She seemed a little dumbfounded, taking off her gloves. "You didn't have to do that."</p><p>"Well, I did it anyway," said Joel. He went into the living room, which was empty. Noah's sleeping bag was still rolled up next to the fireplace. Joel tossed in a log, then another, started stoking it with the cast iron poker. "I see that Noah is elsewhere."</p><p>Cici shrugged. She was over in the kitchen now, leaning against the counter. "He’s probably with Danielle, out in the crow's nest."</p><p>"Danielle?" said Joel. "The Amish girl?"</p><p>Cici smiled. "It's not as weird as it seems." She poured herself a glass of bourbon. "You want some?"</p><p>"Sure, I'll have a little," said Joel. He settled down into the couch with a great big sigh.</p><p>Cici joined him. They both held heavy-bottomed glasses, poured neat with about two fingers of whiskey. "Here's to you," she said.</p><p>"Me?" said Joel.</p><p>"Yeah," said Cici. "For helping Noah. I'm just like, extremely thankful."</p><p>Joel looked down into his whiskey, swirled it around a little. "He's a pretty brave kid," said Joel. </p><p>"Yeah, well. Maybe too brave," said Cici. "Still."</p><p>They touched glasses, drank. The whiskey was good. The fire was very warm, and very big.</p><p>"So how does that work?" said Joel. "With Noah, and Danielle? I wondered if maybe something was going on, but ain't that like, against the rules?"</p><p>"It definitely is," said Cici. "But they're teenagers, and in a few days, they will both have to leave this place, and they'll probably never see each other again."</p><p>"So what you're saying is, fuck the rules," said Joel.</p><p>"Pretty much," said Cici. "I'm mostly kidding though. They're just friends. But they grew up with each other. That changes people."</p><p>"Yeah, I get it."</p><p>"I worry about her, a little," said Cici. "She's a nice girl, and she's braver than you think. But so much in Danielle's life is riding on her finding a <em>suitable</em> husband."</p><p>"And that ain't Noah."</p><p>"He ain’t very suitable, no."</p><p>"If we’re looking at the grand scheme of things," said Joel, "it seems like repopulating the earth is a little more important than religious rules right now. But I ain't been close to God in a long time. That's just my sinner’s opinion." He drank.</p><p>"You sound like Ellie," said Cici, smiling into her whiskey. "She said almost the same exact thing."</p><p>Joel looked at his watch. "Ellie's a good kid," he said.</p><p>"Have you ever been married, Joel?" said Cici. She was looking at the fire as she said it, not at Joel. She drank her whiskey.</p><p>"Yep," he said.</p><p>A little time went by. As usual, she did not press him for details. She was a mysterious woman. She never dropped her hand.</p><p>He felt her looking at him then. As a mystery, she was full of plot twists. So he looked at her, too. Her hair was a kind of dirty blond, nothing special, and it was down now and tucked behind her ears. She had fine bones. Her eyes were brown: dark and deep, like bullets. They were so different than Ellie's, which seemed to float on the surface of her face. He expected her to say something, but she didn't. Instead, she just reached for his left hand and picked it up by the wrist. Her touch jolted him upright. He thought she was looking at his wedding ring finger, but she wasn’t.</p><p>"You need a new watch," she said. </p><p>
  <em>You kept complaining about your broken watch.</em>
</p><p>He looked down as if seeing it for the first time. He scratched his head. She gave him back his wrist and he pulled his sleeve down to cover up the whole thing. "Should we put the music back on?" he said. It put a cap on the conversation.</p><p>She went along with his suggestion, finished her whiskey and got up from the couch. She crossed the room in her socks, dropped the needle on the record player, then she made a face at the Elton John. "This is Noah's," she said.</p><p>"Well, it ain't Madonna," said Joel, "but it'll do just fine."</p><p>"Excuse me?" she said. </p><p>They drank more whiskey and talked, sitting on opposite ends of the couch.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>
  <strong>END PART 1: THE FLOODPLAIN</strong>
</p><p>Thank you for reading! &lt;3 </p><p>Coming soon - <strong>PART 2: THE I-80</strong></p><p>-gala</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0011"><h2>11. Interlude II (The Ark)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>PART 2: THE I-80</p>
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          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>
  <em>cw: mention of suicide, depression</em>
</p><p>On the record player:</p><p>"Sylvia Plath" by Ryan Adams (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EK5RluCvCE">youtube</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/4SiAO85CmTtxDFhINnSlik?si=1ZRAuQ9HST-2Nz_1cApuFg">spotify</a>)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>That night, they sat up in the crow's nest, on separate bean bags, looking at their hands. Noah had wanted to take inventory of his books to decide which he was going to bring with him on the road, and which he was going to leave behind. But it felt weird now that he was up there, and pointless, and sad. Everything he knew, he would have to leave behind, and he would never see it again. Everything. They would have to board up the house, post signs on the electric fence. CONTAMINATED WATER. DO NOT DRINK. They should probably burn it all down, but his mother would not allow that. It was her childhood home, too. They would seal it up instead as a tomb and maybe in 100 years when the spores died or the mushrooms got burnt out the river by somebody with the means to do so, an enterprising explorer would come to this lonely region, discover their farm and read it like hieroglyphics on the wall, stories from another time. He would look at Noah's stack of books and think, What a discovery. What a thing to behold.</p><p>Danielle sat very still, as was her default setting. But she was also picking at her thumbnail, compulsively. She was not wearing her prayer kapp anymore. She still had her hair braided tightly to her head, but she had taken off her kapp. Noah knew some things about Amish by then, and he knew the different types of kapps and bonnets and their meanings. Usually, when she was away from home she would wear a black bonnet over her white kapp, because she was unmarried. But she didn't have the black bonnet today, only the white kapp, and she had only ever removed her head covering in front of him one other time that Noah could remember, and it was when they were thirteen years old and it had been so hot, they ran through the sprinkler and she took off the kapp for just one moment while she fixed her braids.</p><p>"What's wrong?" said Noah. He was deciding between <em>The Road </em>and <em>Blood Meridian. </em>He chose <em>The Road, </em>stuffed it in his backpack.</p><p>"Nothing," said Danielle. She had followed him up there without him knowing. She was quiet as a mouse. When she appeared, he was surprised, but it was okay. He didn't feel like being alone. </p><p>"Why are you biting your nails."</p><p>"I was just having a bad thought," she said. "You know. How it's over. Our lives, as we knew them once, they are over. My mom, and your dad. The land we knew and that raised us. All of it, gone, and now we too must be gone."</p><p>The way she talked sometimes, with her formal words and slight accent, it was foreign to Noah in a mythical way. "Yeah," said Noah. </p><p>She got up then, from the bean bag chair. She looked around. She picked up some of the books to read the summary on the back, then she set them back down again. </p><p>"Anything you want, you can have," he said. "Take whatever."</p><p>"Like what would I take?"</p><p>"Any of my books. I have a lot of comics inside, too."</p><p>She found this to be funny for some reason, smiled with her cheeks getting red. "Ha ha."</p><p>"What's funny?" </p><p>"Where are your guitars?" she said then, out of nowhere, like she was suddenly taken off guard. "I haven't been up here in a while. Where'd they go?"</p><p>"I burned them," said Noah, staring at her. </p><p>She gave him a long, disappointed look and shook her head. "All of them?"</p><p>"Yes."</p><p>"You shouldn't have did that, Noah."</p><p>Sometimes, he felt legitimately like a crazy person, like an imposter. Perhaps he would have been better off on his own. "I know," he said.</p><p>She came and sat down beside him then. He had to move over to give her room. The bean bag chair crinkled beneath them and molded around their bodies. She turned to him. She looked right at him. She framed his face with her palms, touching them to his cheeks. Her hands were cold. "I'm eighteen now," she said. </p><p>"I know," said Noah. "I'm sorry I missed your birthday."</p><p>"Don't worry," she said. "I just, I have hope that my family and my life will find a new hope, do you?"</p><p>"I guess," said Noah.</p><p>"I'm going to miss you though," said Danielle. "So much. You can't know. You and your guitars. You gave me a good escape place, all my life, and you and your family were always so important to us."</p><p>"I'll miss you, too," he said, shrugging. He felt he had little left to give her. "I'm sorry about everything, Danielle. Everything sucks."</p><p>"It does," she continued. "But also, there is one thing that doesn't suck, which is I can make a choice, right now."</p><p>"Which choice?" said Noah.</p><p>She kissed him. It was simple and warm. She was like a shepherd, guiding him in. When they parted, she looked sad. This was not the first time they had kissed, but it had been a long time. A flood had come between them. It drowned much more than the hills. </p><p>"Why did you do that?" he said.</p><p>"Because I wanted to," she said. "I'm sorry. I should have asked first."</p><p>"It's okay," he said. He tucked one small, loose strand of yellow hair behind her ear. In truth, it had made him happy. For just one moment, it lifted him out of the dirt.</p><p>She looked out the window. She folded her hands in her lap demurely. She had freckles on her knuckles and her wrists. She smelled like clean laundry. Being close to her, it made him want more, but it would never happen, nor should it happen, and this he knew, so he put his hands in his pockets and closed his eyes.</p><p>"What was that song you played again, that one time?" said Danielle. "Like two years ago, when we were out here, and it was like, almost fall, just like this? I remember it was getting colder, but the frost still had not come. <em>Take me over</em>?”</p><p>"<em>Take On Me,</em>" said Noah. "It was just some live version off one of my dad's records. MTV Unplugged or something."</p><p>"What's MTV Unplugged?"</p><p>"I don't know," said Noah. "Something from a million years ago. Joel probably knows. We could go inside and listen to it, if you want. You could ask him."</p><p>"Okay," she said, smiling. "Let's do that."</p><p> </p><p>Inside, Cici had gone upstairs, to bed. Joel was sitting on the couch alone, drinking whiskey, and listening to more Ryan Adams on the record player. When Noah and Danielle first came inside, Noah was sort of embarrassed. He didn't know why. But Joel didn't make any sort of fuss about them. He didn't call attention, nor did he ask questions. He said hello to Danielle and told Noah he would get out of his hair. </p><p>"It's okay," said Noah. "We were just gonna listen to music anyway."</p><p>"What is this?" said Danielle. She had reassembled her kapp, on her head. She was only comfortable removing it around Noah. "This is a sad song."</p><p>"It's a song called <em>Sylvia Plath,</em>" said Joel. "This album was released the day before my 17th birthday."</p><p>"Wow," said Danielle. "It must mean a lot to you."</p><p>"Well, I haven't heard it in a while," said Joel. "But hearing it again, now, yes it does bring me back."</p><p>"Do you know what MTV Unplugged is?" said Danielle.</p><p>Joel looked at Noah, who was looking down at his boots. He had his backpack over one shoulder, looking a little lost, a wanderer. Joel set down his whiskey, listening to the song. He said, "MTV Unplugged was on TV, a lot of years ago. Why you asking?"</p><p>"Noah knows a song. He played it once, on his guitar, from MTV Unplugged."</p><p>"His guitar?"</p><p>"Yes," said Danielle. She became embarrassed then, like she had done something wrong. She looked at Noah and then she looked down at her hands, folded into the front of her dress. Noah was looking off somewhere else, flexing his jaw. Something seemed to be going on, something that Joel wasn't privy to. Didn't matter. </p><p>"Well, okay," said Joel, ignoring the tension in the room. "You, uh, familiar with TV, Danielle?"</p><p>"Yes," said Danielle. "Noah has told me about it."</p><p>"Well, MTV Unplugged was just like, live studio recordings of musicians that were popular at the time. A live studio recording meant like, it was unproduced. Or, I don't know. They just played their instruments in a room, in front of people. No multiple takes, no effects or anything like that. Real stripped down. There were some pretty important recordings, back in those days. Some artists, it was a huge deal for them to get on MTV Unplugged."</p><p>"Thanks," said Danielle. "I suppose that makes sense?"</p><p>"Maybe," said Joel. “I don’t know what makes sense anymore.”</p><p>"You guys are up?" said Ellie. She was yawning, coming down the stairs in her PJs. "What the hell?"</p><p>"Don't worry," said Joel. "You didn't miss anything. And I was just about to head up myself."</p><p>"What are we listening to?" she said, totally ignoring him. She came into the living room and picked up the vinyl sleeve off the coffee table. "Ryan Adams. <em>Gold. </em>You sure like this guy, don't you, Joel?"</p><p>Joel sighed. </p><p>"Who's Sylvia Plath?"</p><p>"What am I, an encyclopedia?”</p><p>"Yes, actually," she said, plopping down on the couch next to him. She picked up his glass, sniffed it, and made a face. "Yuck."</p><p>"Sylvia Plath was a poet, right?" said Noah. "Didn't she kill herself?"</p><p>"She was a poet, yes," said Joel. "And yes, she did...commit suicide."</p><p>"Jesus," said Ellie, sinking into the cushions. She crossed her arms over her chest and closed her eyes. "That's sad."</p><p>"Why did she take her own life?" said Danielle.</p><p>"I don't know," said Joel, resigned to his cause now, and outnumbered. "I guess she was unhappy. Or something. She had a rough marriage? Major depression. Ryan Adams, he had a lot of depression, too. Maybe he wrote this song to cope with all that."</p><p>"Music is a gift," said Danielle. "To think that his means of coping could become a song as beautiful as this. Perhaps it is a curse."</p><p>They all sat, staring at the record player. Joel got up and took the needle off the record. "Time for bed," he said. </p><p>"Come on," said Ellie. "I just got down here."</p><p>"Well, that was a mistake," said Joel. "Everybody, to bed. It's late."</p><p> </p><p>With his sleeping bag unrolled in the living room that night, and the lamps turned down low, Noah listened to the song <em>Sylvia Plath </em>on repeat and thought about his life and all that had taken place, from the moment he realized he was alive, up to now, sitting alone on the floor in his living room in front of the fire, imagining himself in another scenario, far away in time and space, in which things were normal, or better, or safe. He envied Joel, in a way. Noah didn't know a better life, and he never would. That is how he felt, and what was meant by his sadness in the crow's nest. That is how he had been feeling for over a year, since his dad died, and the people he knew were all gone, and there were no more delusions, no more pastoral dreams where he could ignore the dying world in which he was born. He was now grown and he would have to go straight to it, make it his own. And Danielle would be okay, because she was not the same as him. She was bright and free and she trusted in god to carry her home, and whether that was bullshit or not, it didn't matter. People believe in the thing that they think will save them. Noah just didn't know what to believe. He was doing his best to follow his heart.</p><p>
  <em>And she and I would sleep on a boat</em><br/>
<em>And swim in the sea without clothes</em><br/>
<em>With rain falling fast on the sea</em><br/>
<em>While she was swimming away, she'd be winking at me</em><br/>
<em>Telling me it would all be okay</em><br/>
<em>Out on the horizon and fading away</em><br/>
<em>And I'd swim to the boat and I'd laugh</em>
</p><p>Ellie came back downstairs a couple minutes later, wired and unable to sleep. When he looked out the window, the moon had finally revealed itself from behind the clouds. It was big and white and full. At first Ellie just said hello and then she was walking around the room, looking at all the different things on the shelves and hanging on the walls, like she was in a museum. She was looking at the paintings, most of them unframed. She said, "Did your dad make these? They're all signed with a W. His name was William, right?"</p><p>"Yeah," said Noah. "His name was William, and yeah, he painted all those."</p><p>"Wow," said Ellie. "He was really good. These are amazing."</p><p>The paintings were mostly landscapes and livestock. There were some of Cici, some of Noah, but they were like, impressions. They were blurred into the background, just blinks of color against the green. "What's your last name?" said Noah. "I was just wondering."</p><p>"My last name?" said Ellie. She smiled. She said, "Uh, Williams, I guess. Weirdly enough. That's the second time someone's asked me that in the past like, day." She came and sat down on the floor next to him, resting her elbows on her knees. "What's yours?"</p><p>"Santos," said Noah. </p><p>"Noah Santos," said Ellie. She looked down at her thumbs. She was sticking them both up for some reason, pressing her knuckles together. "So, uh. What's up with you and Danielle, Noah Santos? You guys a thing or something?"</p><p>"Not really," said Noah. He looked directly at her. His eyes were kind of dark and big, but they weren't as dark up close as they looked from far away. "Not anymore. We're just friends.” He took a huge, deep breath then, and Ellie could tell there was a lot more but that he just didn't feel like talking about it.</p><p>"Well," she said. "Friends are pretty great, too."</p><p>"Yeah, they're okay," said Noah.</p><p>They both smiled.</p><p>"I had a friend once," she said. "A long time ago. Her name was Riley."</p><p>”How’d you guys meet?”</p><p>”School. Or, jail. Whatever you wanna call it.”</p><p>"Where's Riley now?" said Noah.</p><p>Ellie looked at the fire, big and bright, like a carousel. "It's a long story. But she's gone."</p><p>Noah hung his head and looked down at the woodgrain in the floor. He said, "I'm sorry. I'm a dick."</p><p>"It's okay," said Ellie, nodding to herself, trying to be peppy. She didn't want to be sad that night. She wanted to be positive, and alert. Joel and Noah were back. They were heading out soon, on the road again. There was hope. “You're not a dick. And it’s all gonna be okay, don’t you think?”</p><p>"I hope so," he said.</p><p>Ellie’s optimism was contagious, and perhaps that’s why she felt like home to so many who lie awake in the night, thinking more about the past than the future. She lived close to the edge of her worth, it's true. She wanted to believe that there was a reason, for all of this. That there was a purpose, a meaning, behind why she kept on living while all the other people she cared about died. Riley, Tess, Henry, Sam. But she hid volumes. She did it all to help her friends stay afloat. But it wouldn't last forever. She was only one girl.</p><p> </p><p>When they drove away from the farm, they did not want. The wind shook the trees, which were turning colors in the late September light. Danielle waved at Noah, standing between her father and her brother on the lawn.</p><p>It was two trucks to Moline, Joel and Ellie out front, headed for the I-80. "Here goes nothing," said Cici. She was driving, stone-faced. It was done. They had lost this place long before. It belonged to the dead now. She took Noah's hand as they escaped.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0012"><h2>12. Rock Falls (Pt. 1)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
            <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>
    <em>"Listen to me—if I get in trouble down there, you make every shot count. Yeah?"</em>
  </p>
  <div class="center"></div>
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          </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They had originally planned to take Highway 61, also known as the Great River Road, in a near straight shot south to Moline, IL, of the Quad Cities. But they only made it as far as a Wisconsin city called Potosi before they came to a roadblock that they could not pass. It appeared that this part of the Mississippi had become impassable with floods. There was water everywhere, in the streets, flooding the houses and the schools. The Great River Road all but disappeared. By the looks of it, a dam failure somewhere around Dubuque had caused a massive deluge, or that is what Joel had estimated. There was nothing alive out there but fish, birds, whitetail drinking. No sign of Infected meant humans had gone by the wayside in this place long before.</p><p>They had to backtrack, leave the Driftless Area. They ended up on Highway 20, headed almost as far east as Rockford, cut south on county roads till they got to the city of Dixon, a factory and warehouse hub right off the I-88. They pulled over into a Walmart Supercenter parking lot to syphon fuel out of cars and collect supplies. Everywhere you looked it was feral farms and corporate warehouse distribution centers in the middle of vast, unending fields and gray parking lots. It was flat as hell, thought Joel. They were not in the beauty of the Driftless anymore. This was corn country and factory country. Flyover country, and that was it. The Rock River ran through the region as a brown sludge, west to east. They couldn’t find any signs of the mushroom along the banks here, and they wondered if perhaps they had outrun the blight. Even still, they wouldn’t take any chances. They had stashed about ten gallons of clean water in the back of Cici’s truck, and they also had a battery-powered hot plate. They could boil a little bit in a pan if absolutely necessary until they found clean water again.</p><p>On their way out of town, they had to kill a couple clickers who had crowded their trucks in a warehouse parking lot. While up on the rooftop, scoping out the freeway through his binoculars, Joel discovered a tent fort in an interstate underpass, populated mostly by men, blocking their entrance onto the I-88 about a quarter mile ahead. Joel regarded them with great interest while Cici and the kids pillaged the cars in the lot below. These men looked both rotten and suspicious, and they were armed to the teeth and there were some rabid dogs tied to steel beams, fighting each other in the middle of the road. The fort was blocking the freeway on both sides, barricaded by disemboweled train cars and some old farm equipment, though it did not look to be a permanent home. It was more likely some sort of lookout, maybe a checkpoint for a local militia. The fort had big signs chained to its train car barricades and men posted in crow’s nests. The signs all said <em>ANGELS DIE IN OUTLAW STATES. G.F.O.D. </em></p><p>“What is it?” said Cici. She had scaled the wall ladder and was crouched beside him. She’d found a bag of sunflower seeds. She offered him a handful, which he took without hesitation.</p><p>“Looks like an outpost of some sort,” said Joel, handing her the binoculars. “That <em>G.F.O.D.</em> thing is familiar. I swear I’ve seen that before, but I don’t know. These guys ain’t hunters, Cici, I can tell that for sure. I really don’t know what we’re dealing with here.”</p><p>“Can we get around them?”</p><p>“Maybe. They are definitely locals, not military. It’s too makeshift to be overly coordinated, that’s my guess, but who goddam knows. If we stick to the off roads, maybe follow the river, we can get far enough west to get out of their crosshairs and then south of the freeway.”</p><p>“What if there’s more junk like this up ahead?” said Cici. “What the hell do we do?”</p><p>Joel looked down at the sunflower seeds in his palm. They reminded him of Tommy. “I don’t know,” he said. “But if we are planning to get back to the I-80, we have to try.”</p><p>Cici sighed. She gazed through the binoculars, chewing on those sunflower seeds. She would spit out the shells onto the concrete rooftop and then chew some more, repeat, something he would have done with his buddies on the baseball team way back in 2003. “What if we just take one of the trucks?” she said. “Two might draw too much attention.”</p><p>Joel chomped on some of the sunflowers seeds. They were salty and delicious. “That ain’t a bad idea,” he said, holding out his hand for the binoculars. “The cab will be mighty cramped though.”</p><p>“Ours has a decent backseat,” said Cici. “It’s small but me and Ellie can fit.”</p><p>“Okay, then,” said Joel, finishing off the sunflower seeds, putting the binoculars away into his backpack. “Lets go find the kids, get a move on.”</p><p> </p><p>Meanwhile Noah had hacked off the lock to a couple storage units down the parking lot with his mom’s axe from the bed of the truck. The first two were just full of rotten old furniture and appliances and things like garbage bags of clothes and old baby stuff. But the third one looked like it belonged to a woodworker, and there were several acoustic guitars hanging from a rack as well as boxes of tools and a couple of handmaid dollhouses, rocking chairs, rocking horses, dressers, and tables. Everything was lovely and painted with delicate pictures of animals and plants. Ellie was drawn to the dollhouses in all of their intricate detail and realism. They had little kitchens with little stoves, little bedrooms with little beds and a litte record player. They were lovely homes for dolls, but she couldn’t find any dolls, so she just fiddled with their little doors on little hinges and the little bedspreads. Even the drawers opened in the dressers. It was fantastical.</p><p>“Have you ever seen anything like this?” said Ellie. “It’s fucking unbelievable.”</p><p>“Those are pretty good,” said Noah. “There were some dollhouse makers in the old Amish community, but I never saw anything quite that detailed.”</p><p>“Man,” said Ellie, swinging a little tire swing on a little tree. “I wonder how much something like this used to cost, in the old days. They seem priceless.”</p><p>“Maybe they were,” said Noah.</p><p>He picked up one of the acoustic guitars off the rack on the wall and blew the dust off the surface. The strings were out of tune. Absentmindedly, he went to work, tuning the thing, with the guitar on his lap. He’d forgot where he was for a minute.</p><p>“Holy shit, you play?” said Ellie. She leaned against an old bureau with a painting of a deer. She looked on in wonder.</p><p>Noah plucked a few notes. They were pretty. They went together. But then he set the guitar back on its rack and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Let’s go,” he said.</p><p>“Noway,” said Ellie. “Come on. You can’t mess with me like that.”</p><p>He smiled. “I bet if we open all these storage units, we can find some comics.”</p><p>She rolled her eyes and looked up at the cob-webbed ceiling. “Fine,” she said. “But you’re gonna fucking play for me. Someday.”</p><p>It was a deal.</p><p>“Ellie?” They heard Joel’s voice now, getting closer. “Noah? Where’d you get to?”</p><p>“We’re in here,” said Noah.</p><p>Joel poked his head in, stepped into the unit and looked around. “What are y’all doing?”</p><p>“Just taking inventory,” said Ellie. “Whoever this guy was, he led a pretty sweet life.”</p><p>“Yes, he did,” said Joel. He looked around. He was taken with the dollhouses, just like Ellie had been, opening and closing the little doors on their hinges. It seemed to take him back. He became wistful.</p><p>“You ever made a dollhouse, Joel?” said Ellie.</p><p>“Me?” said Joel. “No, no. Nothing like this.” He looked over at the guitars. Then, he looked at Ellie. “Y’all ready to go? We got a long day ahead of us.”</p><p>“Sure,” said Ellie. “I just—hang on.” Inside one of the dollhouses, there was a tiny rocking chair. It was so lovely. It actually rocked, and she wished she had one just like it, only big enough to sit in. She’d never really sat in a rocking chair before. She put it in her back-pack. “I like keepsakes,” she said.</p><p>They went outside, into the long, fall sun on the grass.</p><p>“So what are we doing?” said Noah.</p><p>“We got a bit of a problem,” said Joel. “Your mom is combining all our stuff now into one truck.”</p><p>“One truck?” said Noah. He looked at Ellie. She shrugged. “Can we all fit?”</p><p>“I hope so. Anyway, there are some bad characters up ahead. Looks like a lookout, or something. It requires avoidance.”</p><p>“Shit,” said Ellie. “More bad guys? What are they now?”</p><p>“I got no idea,” said Joel. “I’m hoping we don’t need to find out.”</p><p>“Well,” said Ellie, hooking her thumbs through the straps on her backpack. She was quieter these days, but she was still Ellie. “Whatever it is, we can do it, right, Joel? We’ll make it. We have to.”</p><p>They were all in long sleeves. The summer warmth was gone from their days, but the sky was amazingly clear. Joel glanced to Cici, about fifty yards away, tying down the last of their things in the bed of the truck. “Sure, kiddo.”</p><p>           </p><p>They left the Walmart and the storage facility and went west down a short thoroughfare which cut through a bunch of cornfields on the south side of the street and warehouse centers on the north. The thoroughfare was literally called Bloody Gulch Road, a charming omen.</p><p>“Jesus fucking Christ,” said Ellie. “Bloody Gulch Road? What the hell could have happened on a road like this so that somebody decided to name it Bloody Gulch?”</p><p>“Can’t be anything good, obviously,” said Cici. “Maybe it’s haunted.”</p><p>“It’s freaking me out, a little bit,” said Joel.</p><p>“You never get freaked out,” said Ellie.</p><p>Joel glanced at her in the rearview mirror. She was looking out the window at the feral cornfields. Noah pointed out a sign for the Rock River. Joel kept going till he could see it, floating quietly over there on the other side of a meadow full of whitetail. The deer all looked up and hopped away as they drove past. They were headed southwest now, the Rock River to the north, the I-88 to the south, dilapidated farms on all sides, driving in a kind of bloated silence. It was a barren country, with some American flags still tattered and flapping on their big red barns, the brown fields, the blue sky. They went over a bridge. The river was sludgy but high. Soon, they started seeing old houses on big lots, then a church overgrown with vines and tall grasses. Most of the trees were evergreens. The roads were in bad condition, and the land was oppressively flat, thought Joel. Just deadly flat for miles.</p><p>Eventually, they drove under a white walking bridge with a big white sign that said in friendly, green letters: <em>Welcome to ROCK FALLS. </em>Rock Falls. What kind of city was this? They drove past a bunch more farms. There were shabby apartments with boards on their windows, a trailer park, many trees, deciduous and changing colors, and then they drove past a restaurant gast station and a car wash, and then the road narrowed through a big grove of maples, and they were crossing another bridge over what appeared to be a drainage creek, some run-off from the Rock River. In the silence of the forest surrounding, Joel drew tense. Up ahead, you could see, it was residential. They passed houses on all sides, boarded up, reclaimed by their natural surroundings. It was a shady street, the wind blowing in the autumnal trees. Some of the houses were charred and parts of them burned to the ground, and some were in-tact and some completely covered in moss or pinned beneath the enormity of a downed tree, tangled in the power lines. Joel asked Cici to check the map. It looked like the I-88 was dipping south here, and they needed to get off or they would miss their chance.</p><p>At some point, the street became sort of commercial, with cracked up parking lots and a couple mills and distribution centers. Joel turned left onto 1<sup>st</sup> Avenue, which was also Highway 40, and this seemed to be a kind of gateway into a middling city center, and once they passed the Hardee’s on the left, then a bank in a mini-mall and a shell station, they came to a screeching stop. Up ahead, from a tangled parking lot for a frozen yogurt stand all stacked with gnarled cars, a bunch of deer had lifted up and started making across the road. They lurched forward and watched then, mesmerized, as a huge explosion blew not a quarter mile up the street, followed shortly thereafter by a massive exchange of gunfire.</p><p>“Holy shit,” said Ellie. “Joel?”           </p><p>“Joel,” said Cici.</p><p>Noah shook him by the shoulder. “Joel.”</p><p>Joel whipped the car around, heading back in the direction they came from, but upon the explosion, dozens of motorcycles descended upon the thoroughfare, pouring in from all sides, driven by men in black leather vests with bandanas masking their faces and black flags whipping in the breeze. The sounds of their engines, all at once, was deafening, and the air was filling with smoke and debris from the explosion so as to temporarily dampen both Joel’s sense of sight and his sense of sound. He hit the breaks, hoping to let them pass in the dust and confusion. He told everybody to get down then, and he hauled ass out of there. In the rearview window, he caught sight of their leather vests with the enormous patchwork skull, the blocky letters on the back: <em>OUTLAWS MC, </em>they read.<em> ILLINOIS. </em></p><p>“Outlaws?” he said.</p><p>He got momentarily tripped up. Nobody heard him. The Outlaws were not what he had expected, but in the moment he didn’t have time to wonder why the hell not. Four bikes had broken away from the herd now and they were turned around and headed straight for them. They had their sidearms drawn and ready.</p><p>“Are they following us?” said Noah.</p><p>Joel swore, coming back to reality. The truck was cumbersome. He pushed his foot to the floor, but it was old, and the road was gonna end soon enough. He wasn’t sure how to lose them.</p><p>“What do we do?” said Ellie.</p><p>Joel said nothing. He kept pushing forward in the truck, but Cici took matters into her own hands. After opening the window on the back of the cab with decision, she was suddenly climbing through. Joel could see the men aiming their guns, great big pistols, and he shouted back at her to stop what she was doing.</p><p>”Cici. Cici! Goddammit.”</p><p>But she either couldn’t hear him, or she wasn’t listening. She lit up two molotov cocktails, hanging halfway out onto the bed of the truck. Everybody watched as she lit up the first two bikers before they even knew it was coming. They skidded off the side of the road in a blaze of glory, and you could barely hear their screaming over the mania of the scene. The third man got tangled up and went down along with them, trying to avoid the fire, and the fourth pulled over, fired a few fruitless shots in their direction before running after his buddies in the middle of the street.</p><p>As soon as it was done, Joel hung a fast right, off the main road and onto a side street. Cici climbed back into the cab and closed the window behind her, leaving the noise and psychosis in the dust. She said nothing at first, just sat there and so did everybody else. But you could feel some sort of tension in the cab, an awful, nagging thing, between Joel and Cici. She had saved them but it had been reckless. Nobody had anything to say. Not yet.</p><p>Joel just kept driving. He drove far as he could, past a red brick school on the right and a bunch more parks and houses. Soon, they hit a dead end, back at the drainage creek and a healthy, autumnal grove blocking their exit. Joel parked along the grove, underneath a canopy of red and yellow leaves. He killed the engine, sat staring at the steering wheel with the keys still in the ignition for quite some time. You could hear the birds, chirping outside with the distant gunfire.</p><p>At some point, Joel finally found the mental means to articulate himself. He turned all the way around in his seat, looking Cici in the eye. He said, "What the goddam hell was that.” </p><p>“What are you talking about."</p><p>“Your little stunt back there," he said, "lighting up those fellers in the most dramatic way possible. It coulda got you killed, and it drew a hell of a lot of attention to us in the mean time.”</p><p>“They were following us. They had guns. What else was I supposed to do?”</p><p>“I had it handled.”</p><p>“You can’t out-maneuver four bikers in this piece of shit,” she said. "They would’ve killed us, and you know it. And by the way, if it had been you back here, don’t pretend like you wouldn’t have done the same fucking thing."</p><p>Joel was gripping the steering wheel with both hands. He closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest. Noah and Ellie both sat like boulders, staring down at their shoes.</p><p>“Fine,” he said. “But now, we are in a bind. We need to figure out what to do.” </p><p>“I agree,” said Cici.</p><p>Nobody said anything for a while.</p><p>When Joel looked at Cici in the rearview mirror, she was looking out the window. They were safe, for now. He knew she was right, he just couldn’t admit it. </p><p>"So, what are we gonna do?” said Ellie, breaking the silence, finally. Her voice was small but clear in the void. She put her hands on the back of Noah’s seat and leaned forward. “Joel?”</p><p>“Just give me a minute,” he said.</p><p>Cici got his drift. She wasn’t spurned, just hot. She shrugged it off. She had the Illinois road map in her backpack. She took it out, unfolded it in her lap. Tracing her finger along the possibilities, she sighed, because it wasn’t good.</p><p>"What's the matter," said Joel.</p><p>“We can't get past the creek this way,” she said. “Just an FYI. We need to backtrack if we’re gonna get to the interstate.”</p><p>“How much do we need to backtrack,” said Joel.</p><p>“A block, back that way. That’ll take us south to a bridge, which gets us over the creek, but there’s no way to get back on I-88 without getting back toward the town, or without backtracking completely. Even still, at this point, whoever those bikers were, they know we’re here now. I don’t think we’d be able to go back the way we came, even if we wanted to.”</p><p>Joel was stroking his beard. Cici was staring at the back of his ear. He said, “The I-88. That’ll take us to the Quad Cities eventually, and the I-80.”</p><p>"Yes."</p><p>“Okay.” He took a deep breath, full of decision. Then he removed the keys from the ignition. "Thank you."</p><p>"Don't mention it."</p><p>“So, what are we gonna do?” said Ellie.</p><p>“We need to lie low,” said Joel, looking at them all, one by one. “We’ll let the dust settle, wait till night.”</p><p>“Sounds good,” said Cici. She folded the map back up into a perfect rectangle. “There are a lot of houses around here.”</p><p>“Then let’s go find one,” said Joel. “Noah, you good?”</p><p>“I’m good,” he said. He looked back at his mom. She gave him a warm look, which he seemed to accept with hesitance.</p><p> </p><p>They walked about a block up the wooded street, still with the sounds of the gunfire superimposed upon the elegant bubbling of the creek. Whoever it was that had followed them, they hadn’t caught up yet. Lord knew how much time they had. They found a little yellow house on a big lot with lots of trees. It was quiet enough, and empty, with two floors. There were a couple dead clickers in the backyard, their heads blown off by a shotgun, but they had been dead for a while and decomposed to the bone. The lot with the house was quite beautiful in fall colors, even with the sound of a war going off in the distance. The inside of the house looked like somebody had been living there for a long time after the outbreak, but it had probably been abandoned for even longer since. There was some graffiti on the wall in the living room, over the couch. It was not ornate. Just a lot of massive red letters: <em>GOD FORGIVES. OUTLAWS DON'T. </em>And then a massive <em>A.D.I.O.S.</em></p><p>Joel dropped his backpack by his feet. He remembered it now, at least part of that motto, and seeing it for the first time. It had been more than twenty years ago. Him and Tommy riding their Harleys through the plains for Tommy’s twentieth birthday. They were on  I-65, headed out of Nashville, when they made a stop in Bowling Green, Kentucky and saw a lot of guys in vests just like the ones he'd seen today, with the skull and pistons, and they were parked on the side of the road in big herds, all with that <em>G.F.O.D. </em>etched into the leather of their vests. Some of them had it tattooed on their necks. <em>G.F.O.D. </em></p><p>
  <em>God forgives. Outlaws don't.</em>
</p><p>It was a one-percenter motorcycle club, turned paramilitary, in his observation. The four of them had walked into the middle of a goddam turf war.</p><p>“This again,” said Cici. She had come to stand beside him.</p><p>Joel hung his head. He felt mighty stupid by now. He closed his eyes. He said, “Look, Cici.”</p><p>“It’s okay.” She was reading his mind again.</p><p>“No, it ain’t. You saved our asses. I shouldn’t have—I don’t know.”</p><p>“You don’t have to thank me,” she said. “It’s okay.”</p><p>“Me and Ellie, we got into a scrape, in a truck just like that, back in Pittsburgh. I couldn’t get us out of it then, and we nearly got killed. Both of us.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>“Even still." He looked at her. "You sticking out your neck like that—you need to cool it. You got a son, Cici. He needs you.”</p><p>“That’s why I did it,” she said. She was staring right at him with her brown eyes, big and deep. She had light circles forming underneath like she was exhausted to her bones. “I get what you're saying, but it's like I said in the truck. You would’ve done the same thing. I’m sure you do all the time. For Ellie.”</p><p>Joel wanted to say it wasn't the same, but instead he stopped to listen to the kids laughing and cracking open some sodas in the other room. It seemed they had found a stash, and they were young and so easy to fill the days with sounds of joy. </p><p>He looked back to the numbers on the wall. Hooking his thumbs into his belt loops, he said, “You recognize this?”</p><p>“Only from that lookout back on the interstate. Do you know what it means?”</p><p>“I do,” he said. “I remembered, when we saw them fellers on their bikes. I seen it on their vests. It's Outlaws, a motorcycle gang. I remember them from...before.”</p><p>“Seriously?"</p><p>“Yes, ma’am.”</p><p>She took her hair down, like a compulsion, then she put it right back up again. “Is this a turf war?”</p><p>“Looks like it.”</p><p>“Who do you think it’s with?”</p><p>“I got no idea,” said Joel. “Some other gang, probably? That sign we saw on the way in, it said, <em>Angels die in Outlaw states. A.D.I.O.S. </em>Maybe that means the Hells Angels. Either way, I don’t think it matters much. We're on the wrong side, no matter which way we slice it.”</p><p>“I’ll go make some routes,” she said. “Get us some options for tonight.”</p><p>"Good call.”</p><p>“And there’s some apples, in my backpack, if you’re hungry. They’re a parting gift, from Danielle.”</p><p>“Thank you,” said Joel.</p><p>She went and sat down at the busted up kitchen table with her map and her pencil. He exhaled, something heavy inexplicably gone from his soul. He went through Cici’s backpack for the apples, feeling somewhat odd as he did. But there was nothing in there worth reckoning with. He found the bag of apples, red and pink and yellow. They smelled good, like the changing of the seasons.</p>
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<a name="section0013"><h2>13. Rock Falls (Pt. 2)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Summary for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
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    <em>"You kept complaining about your broken watch."</em>
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          </blockquote><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>On the tape deck:</p><p>"Hell on Heels" by the Pistol Annies (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOKtbJfNLFk">youtube</a> | <a href="https://open.spotify.com/track/0sgnJ5LFjEy2IuQ99NEZ1C?si=N6VF0F51S9yL7mFHGqhE1A">spotify</a>)</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Outside, Ellie and Noah were gathering firewood. They had gone across the street, over to the grove by the creek. There were enough downed and split trees, they didn’t really need an axe, but Noah carried one over his shoulder anyway. The wood was for their future. Once they got out of Rock Falls, there might be nights on the prairie, said Joel. They wanted to be prepared, in case it rained, or in case the trees thinned out. It wasn’t very wooded in central Illinois, and there wasn’t a lot of shelter other than the farmhouses and warehouses, a lot of which were stripped to the studs or overrun. Even in the wake of the apocalypse, it was as flat and exposed as ever out there, like a blanched table top. Uness you were right on the river, there was nothing of trees.</p><p>“Oh, come on,” said Ellie. “You’ve never seen <em>Top Gun</em>?”</p><p>“No,” said Noah. “Though Joel seemed to know a lot about it.”</p><p>“Well, it’s fucking rad,” said Ellie. “I mean, at least until the sad part.”</p><p>“What sad part?”</p><p>Ellie had several cuts of firewood tucked under her arm, more in a canvas sack, which she dragged out behind her through the crunchy leaves. Same went for Noah. They were headed back to the house, where Joel and Cici were planning their daring escape. “One of the main characters,” she said. “He dies.”</p><p>“Maverick?” said Noah.</p><p>“Uh, no. That's not it,” said Ellie.</p><p>“Ice Man?”</p><p>“I think the guy who dies is named Duck, or something. Maybe Goose?”</p><p>“Goose?”</p><p>“Character names in popular movies from fifty years ago are not my area of expertise,” said Ellie, “but even still, next chance we get, I’m showing you <em>Top Gun.</em>”</p><p>“Sounds good.”</p><p>“Maybe you can learn to play <em>Danger Zone, </em>on the guitar.”</p><p>“I don’t know what that is,” said Noah. “But I can assure you, I will not be playing anything called <em>Danger Zone</em> on the guitar.”</p><p>“Aw, come on.”</p><p>“Deal with it.”</p><p>They walked, smiling at one another. The light behind the trees was beginning to fade. Night would fall soon. You could feel the chill on the air and hear the rushing of the creek. They stayed away from the water.</p><p>“There’s the truck,” said Ellie.</p><p>“Yup,” said Noah.</p><p>“Do you think—”</p><p>She was cut short by the sound of an engine. It growled into the near distance and was followed shortly by another, then another, then more. Familiar with the sound by now, Ellie and Noah fell back into the grove, hid behind a couple big oak trees. Their boots planted in the fallen red leaves, they waited. Noah picked his shotgun up off his shoulder. Ellie had her pistol stuffed in the back of her jeans. She looked to Noah for direction. He shook his head. <em>Don’t talk. Don’t move. </em>They waited in the twilit grove, quiet and listening to the frogs as four men parked their bikes up ahead and started to talk.</p><p>“That’s the truck,” said one of them. He sounded angry. “That’s it.”</p><p>“You sure?” said another. This one had a southern accent and a high voice, like a flute. “Could be fifty trucks like that in this shithole.”</p><p>“That’s it,” said the first guy. “Wisconsin plates. I remember.”</p><p>There was a long silence. Noah tilted his head to peak around the tree. He could barely see them. He was on the ground, just saw four pairs of legs, standing in the tall grass by the side of the road. Two of them had long guns dangling by their sides.</p><p>“Let’s look around,” said the southerner. He seemed like the leader. “They got to be hiding out in one of them houses.”</p><p>“What do we do if we find them?” said a new voice, sounded young.</p><p>“Kill em. We ain't exactly signed off on this. It ain’t a complex mission.”</p><p>“Why do we need to kill them? Can’t we just drive them out? I don’t think people like that came here on purpose. Probably got lost on the way to the Sanctuary City.”</p><p>The guy got smacked or something.</p><p>“Shut the fuck up.”</p><p>“They killed Jordan, and Roper. You got a problem?”</p><p>“No,” said the young guy, rattled. “Jesus fucking Christ. I got it. I got it.”</p><p>“Good. Now, me and Linden are gonna hit them houses, the yellow one first, and on down the line. Cory, you comb through these trees here. Who fuckin knows.”</p><p>“What about me?”</p><p>“Stand fucking watch,” said the southerner. “Shoot anybody that ain’t us.”</p><p>“Okay, okay.”</p><p>He got smacked again, harder this time. There was a scuffle and low talking. Noah looked over at Ellie, who looked terrified. She was counting her bullets.</p><p>“What do we do?” she said. “There going for the house.”</p><p>“Mom and Joel will have heard the engines, too,” said Noah. “Don’t worry. They’ll be okay.”</p><p>“What about us?”</p><p>“Just wait,” said Noah. “Stay hidden.”</p><p>She listened, gun steady at her side. Three of the men had scattered now, and there was one headed their way. His footsteps seemed hurried, like he had let his guard down. Noah picked up a rock out of the dirt, then he tossed it past the tree, well up ahead so that it landed in the brush near the truck. The man’s footsteps stopped, stiffened up, then started heading in the other direction. Noah looked at Ellie, who nodded in affirmation of what he had to do. The man was no taller than Noah. He was probably older. He was wearing a black vest over a jean jacket. The vest said <em>Outlaws MC, Illinois. </em>It had a skull and crossbones, or cross-something. They didn’t look like bones, but it didn’t matter. Noah took him out. It was not fast. He strangled him from behind with the barrel of the shotgun pressing into his windpipe. Drug down to the earth, the guy hadn’t known what hit him. He tried to struggle, but Noah was stronger. The lights went out from his eyes, his gun falling into the leaves. Noah let the body fall, picked up the gun with two hands. It was an assault rife. He’d never held one before, but he had seen one. His Uncle Nick, he’d had one a lot like this, military issue, but just like Uncle Nick, it had got lost in the church fire south of LaCrosse. Noah took a couple steps back. Ellie said, “Get a look at that fucking thing.”</p><p>Noah said nothing. He wiped his nose on his sleeve. Then he looked down at the rifle in his hands. They heard another sound, up ahead, then a gunshot. It zinged past their heads and landed somewhere in the dirt. The guy standing watch, he had caught wind of them. They dropped to the ground, pressed up behind a huge, fallen tree with their butts in the dirt and the leaves. The roots were sticking up in the air in all directions, like some sort of prehistoric monster. It must have been downed by wind, or a lightning strike. The dude fired off a couple more rounds in their direction. He was wasting bullets, thought Noah, untrained. Noah couldn’t get the angle, so he picked up another rock and chucked it at the guy as hard as he could. He was hiding by the side of the pick-up. The rock dented the door and the guy swore loudly and stumbled just enough to the side. Ellie shot him in the neck, then twice in the chest, with zero hesitation. He died almost instantly.</p><p>Ellie looked down at the barrel of the pistol. It was still smoking. Then she looked up at Noah with her eyes, like quarters. The guy she’d killed, it had been the young one. The one with questions.</p><p>“Come on,” said Noah. “Joel, and Cici.”</p><p>“Yeah.” She nodded, her face so freckled as the moon had begun to rise in the purple light of evening.</p><p> </p><p>Joel and Cici had been hunched over the road map for the better part of the afternoon, sitting at the kitchen table on rickety chairs. They each ate two apples, discarding the cores into the trashcan under the sink. Joel went to the window. He pulled back the curtain. Noah and Ellie were out of sight, probably had gone down to the bank on the creek, looking for firewood. The apples had been delicious. Crisp, sweet. He had forgotten about this time of year, the autumn. Living on the outside, it was unpredictable. You were exposed on all sides, and you always had to be on the run. It was a nightmare. But there were apple trees.</p><p>“Joel.” It was Cici. She had gone to find a bathroom. When he followed her voice down the hall, she was there, looking in the mirror. Drawn on the mirror in black inks was some kind of map. It had an “X” marking the spot. It looked like the “X” was representing their house, this house. Over the map it said, <em>Fallen Angels Rest Here.</em></p><p>“We gotta get the hell out of here,” said Joel. “I reckon this means Hells Angels.”</p><p>“There’s a whole, empty state for them to take. They could spread out all over. Why are they fighting over one shit town?”</p><p>“Boredom?” said Joel. “A grudge? God knows. There’s probably shit towns like this all over, under fire.”</p><p>“At least thieves come into your house, steal your shit after they kill you. It’s not just war.”</p><p>"It’s all just war, Miss Cici,” said Joel. He tried buffing the marker off the mirror, but it was permanent. “And there ain’t’ no honor among thieves, neither. You need to trust me on that.”</p><p>“Do I?”</p><p>He gave her a look. “Maybe I’ll tell you more about it. Another time.”</p><p>“I’m gonna hold you to that.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know you will.”</p><p>They heard the bikes pull up then. It scared the shit out of both of them. They ducked out of the bathroom, over to the front of the house, where you could peak through the curtains and the boards hammered in over the windows.</p><p>Joel was not used to this, being separate from Ellie. It must have been showing on his face, because Cici was shaking him by the shoulder saying, “Hey. They heard it, too. She’s with Noah. She’s safe.”</p><p>“I know,” said Joel, just thinking about Noah, back at Centennial Hall in La Crosse, that one hair of a precious moment they had thought they were under siege. “I know. Goddammit.”</p><p>
  <em>You ever killed a person with your gun? </em>
</p><p>He had just wanted the truth about his father.</p><p>Suddenly, Joel was pissed off. He loaded the shotgun, pumped it once, and went for the front door. “This ain’t happenin.”</p><p>“What are you gonna do?”</p><p>“Just wait here.”</p><p>“Uh, no.”</p><p>“Wait here,” said Joel. “They come inside, you make them regret it. I know you know how to do that. Otherwise, wait here, okay?”</p><p>He looked serious in a way she had never seen before. Not mean or unhinged, just serious. She trusted him, but she didn’t know him yet. Didn’t know his style. “Don’t get killed.”</p><p>“Wait here.”</p><p>So she did, for a good long minute. She heard a massive thud banging against the front door. She thought it was somebody coming inside at first, but when she heard it again, she knew that it was something else. Joel came back in, dragging one of the bikers by the wrists. She couldn’t tell if the guy was dead or just unconscious, but then she got the full view of his neck, snapped clean in two, his head dangling at a bizarre angle. It almost made her sick, just the surprise of it, so she had to look away. She stood up and backed off, watched as Joel hauled the body to the living room, then he went back to the door. “There’s one more coming.”</p><p>That’s when the gunfire began. It was not on them, but back at the river. She felt her throat go dry and numb as her heart lifted clean out her chest. Noah, and Ellie. and she got up off the floor. Outside, night was falling, but it wasn’t dark yet. They saw one guy, ducked behind the great big maple in the front yard. He was not under fire, but he was loading a rifle, looking hurried as hell. Cici lost her cool for a minute. She knew how to blow guys up, how to take them out from a distance, but she was used to having a stronghold, a place to retreat to when the going got rough. But hand-to-hand, at close range, fighting men twice her size, she wasn’t seasoned.</p><p>Joel said, “I got this.”</p><p>With the gunfire coming to a close out toward the river and the light getting scarce, Joel snuck out the back door and went along the siding, stayed close to the house till he got the asshole in his sights. Still without a clean shot, he was waiting for the guy to turn his back so he could do it quiet and up close. Meanwhile, Cici was at the front door. He could see her, with her back pressed to the jamb and waited to see what she would do. She caught his eye, pressed a finger to her lips, then tossed one of Danielle’s apples so that it hit the guy right on the side of the fuckin face. It was almost funny. But then he freaked him out so bad, he tipped over onto his back and started unloading into oblivion, up into the trees like he thought he was being attacked from up above. Once he emptied the magazine, he looked stunned, reached into his pocket, but Joel was already upon him.</p><p>The minute he was done for, Joel pressed his back to that maple and waited for more unruly violence to fill the silence of the coming night. But it was quiet as hell. He peaked around the tree, caught sight of Ellie, poking her head over the bed of the pickup truck and nearly lost all the breath in his lungs. She was okay. Noah walked out, too, then, kicked over one of the bikes parked at the side of the road, started poking at it with a brand new rifle Joel had never seen before. Noah saw Joel, nodded firmly, and said, “It’s all clear.”</p><p>Ellie broke around the truck and across the street then, hauled into Joel’s arms so hard, she nearly knocked the wind out of him.</p><p>"Hey, you okay, kiddo?"</p><p>“We did it,” she said. “Holy shit. We did it.”</p><p>Joel looked around, holding her under his arm as Cici came out onto the porch, real hesitant. “Noah?” she said. Then she ran to him. He held her there in the front yard, looking a little shell-shocked, and Joel knew what had gone down back there. He closed his eyes. Ellie smelled like firewood though. Her enthusiasm calmed him down, brought him back to this moment, right here and now, like a reminder. </p><p>“We gotta go, now,” he said. “Grab all the guns and ammo you can off these guys, then get in the truck. Come on.”</p><p>“I don’t think anymore are coming,” said Noah, as he stashed three solid new rifles and a 9mm into the back. “Or, I didn’t get that impression.”</p><p>“I sure hope you’re right, kid,” said Joel.</p><p>They tossed their shit into the cab and peeled off, Cici navigating from the front seat, while Noah and Ellie leaned against one another, looking out the windows in the back. Noah was so tall, his knees were pressed up against the seat in front of him, and he looked a little like a sardine, but he didn't complain. Outside, the whole world was dark. You couldn't see anything, from the trees on the creek to the busted out warehouses and farms of the town. Once they hit that bridge across the water, they were seeing open road again, driving right into the sunset and leaving Rock Falls. As they merged onto the I-88, they passed by a group of guys, a real big group, maybe twenty or more, squatting on bikes under an overpass, looked like they were trading goods and smoking cigarettes. When the truck flew by, they opened fire, but Joel had them flexed into high gear, as he done with this bullshit, and they escaped.</p><p> </p><p>Once they were looking at endless oceans of cornfields again and the unpleasant forever that was central Illinois, they drove for a while in silence. Joel thought about how country like this, it would normally smell to the holy of cowshit, but not anymore. Cici motivated at one point, put some music on the cassette player. It was the Pistol Annies, mighty familiar, seemed like something she had been saving up for a celebration.</p><p>When he heard the music going on, Joel started to laugh. He said, “You shittin me?”</p><p>She said, “What? You don’t like Miranda Lambert?”</p><p>And he said, “Shoulda known you’d be a goddam Pistol Annies girl.”</p><p>“What’s that supposed to mean?”</p><p>“Nothin,” said Joel, one hand on the wheel, giving her a sideways look. “I just shoulda known is all.”</p><p>He didn’t tell her that he had seen this band, the Pistol Annies, starring Miranda Lambert, in concert, in Austin, not three weeks before the Outbreak began. Didn’t tell her that it had been Sarah who’d dragged him there, with a whole group of her friends, along with Tommy, and that while the girls sang loudly about being <em>Hell on Heels</em><em>, </em>he and Tommy were in the stadium bar, drinking ten-dollar beers and talking to a bartender named Merle who said he’d once snuck onto Blake Shelton’s tour bus and took a picture of a bunch of groupies smoking crack from a glass pipe while listening to Britney Spears. Said he lost the picture when he dropped his phone in the reservoir in a place called Gun Barrel City.</p><p><em>All these women, come ‘round these parts to see the Pistol Annies, they are true silver dollars. True silver dollars, they are,</em> he’d said while shining up a rocks glass. Joel didn’t know what that meant, but Merle the bartender had been a man of wisdom with a Semper Fi tattoo on his forearm and more stories about Desert Storm than he knew how to count. He shared his cigarettes, and when the concert was through, they all went back to the house where the girls stayed up past 3am in Sarah’s room, telling ghost stories and playing the ouija board while Joel stayed up, too, watching reruns of <em>The X-Files</em>, nodding off on the couch just in case anyone got scared.</p><p>“Who are the Pistol Annies?” said Ellie, leaning with her head between the seats. “Sounds badass as fuck.”</p><p>“Well, they are,” said Cici, turning up the music. “Or, they were, I guess. Though I choose to believe that musicians never really die.”</p><p>She looked at Noah, who was looking out the window. He never could get into this shit. But he was trying his best, all the same.</p><p>"You okay?" said Ellie, nudging him, while the adults were reminiscing up there about whatever the fuck.</p><p>Noah looked at her, and he nodded. He said, "Are you?"</p><p>"That was a rush," she said. "Man. Pretty fucked up though. I wish we didn't have to, you know. Kill those guys."</p><p>It was in her way of framing things, bad situations. She made everything seem okay, or like it could easily be forgotten. So he gave her a fist bump. "You did good."</p><p>"Yeah. You, too, boss."</p><p>Then they slouched back and stared up at the ceiling, cringing in boredom while Cici cranked the tunes and Joel joked with her to settle down. At some point, however, Joel slammed on the breaks. They haulted to a dead stop in the middle of the freeway, and Ellie hadn't been paying attention, so it scared the shit out of her. She sat straight up and said, "What the fuck, Joel?"</p><p>"Look," said Cici.</p><p>They saw it then, all of them, the sign on the freeway overpass. It was a sign for Moline/Quad Cities, and beneath it, there was another, plain wood, painted and illuminated by four massive floodlights: </p><p>
  <em>SANCTUARY CITY. MOLINE. STRAIGHT AHEAD.</em>
</p><p>"More signs," said Noah, leaning forward so he could get a better look. The upholstery creaked against his weight. "We heard those bikers mention this place. I totally forgot."</p><p>"You think it's legit?" said Ellie.</p><p>Joel sighed heavily, an old man's sigh. "Guess we're gonna find out."</p><p>Cici had turned the music way down, so now you could barely hear it over the hum of the truck. Joel put them back in drive, hauled forward, slower this time. In the backseat, Noah and Ellie started loading the guns, just in case. </p>
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